How to back up and restore Farming Simulator 25 savegames, and an expansion-day routine for modded careers

24 Oct 2026 · 3 min read · ModsDrop

Pictured: CLAAS Dominator 108 – 221 hp Combine with C510 Header, from the ModsDrop library.

Farming Simulator 25’s Beans & Alpacas expansion arrives on 27 October 2026, and expansions come with a game update that touches more than an ordinary patch. If you have a career built on mods, the ten minutes to read this and copy two folders are the cheapest insurance you will ever take out. Here is where FS25 keeps your savegames, what is in them, how to back them up and restore them, and a routine for expansion day.

Where the savegames are

On a Windows PC, in Documents\My Games\FarmingSimulator2025. Each career slot is a folder of its own: savegame1, savegame2 and so on. Next to them is the mods folder, the game’s log.txt, and the game’s settings. On consoles the game manages its saves itself and none of this applies.

What a savegame contains

A set of XML files and a few binary ones. The main file, careerSavegame.xml, records the map the save belongs to, the settings it was started with, and the mods it was last played with. The others hold the farms, the fields, the vehicles, the placeables, the animals and the state of the economy. Two consequences follow:

A save needs its map. If it was started on a map mod, that exact map zip has to be present to load it.
A save remembers its mods. Load it without one of them and the game warns you; if you carry on and save, everything that came from the missing mod (a tractor, a placeable, a production) is gone from that save for good.

Backing up

Close the game.
Copy the savegameN folder of each career you care about to somewhere outside Documents\My Games, with the date in the folder name.
Copy the mods folder too, or at least the zips your saves use. A savegame without its exact mods is a savegame you cannot fully restore, and mods disappear from the internet, map mods most of all.

That is all. Several gigabytes, a minute or two on an SSD. Recent versions of the game also keep automatic backups of savegames in a savegameBackup folder next to the slots; check whether yours has one and what it holds, but treat it as a bonus, not as your backup.

Restoring

Close the game, delete or rename the damaged savegameN folder, copy your backup into its place under the same name, and make sure the mods the save needs are in the mods folder in the versions it was played with. Start the game and load the slot. If the game says a mod is missing, close it without saving and put the mod back first.

Expansion-day routine

Before the update: back up your savegames and your mods folder as above.
After the update: start the game once with every mod unticked on a new, empty career, to confirm the game itself works.
Load a copy, not the original. Copy your main savegame into a free slot and load that one first with your mods. If something is wrong, your real career has not been touched.
Read the warnings. The mod selection screen and log.txt will name the mods the update broke. Script mods are the likeliest casualties, as they were after patch 1.24 disabled loadstring.
Wait for authors where a mod your save depends on is broken. Keep playing the backup on the old setup if you can, or play the new map in a fresh career while the fixes arrive.

Moving to a new PC

The same two folders are all you need. Install the game, start it once so it creates its folders, then copy your savegameN folders and your mods folder into the new Documents\My Games\FarmingSimulator2025. Owned DLC and the expansion come with your platform account, not with the save.

Multiplayer

A hosted multiplayer game is saved on the host’s PC like any career, so the host makes the backup. On a dedicated server the savegame lives on the server; its web interface lets the admin download it, and that download is the backup.

The expansion itself is covered in what Beans & Alpacas brings, and the install routine in how to install FS25 mods.