Xbox Game Pass Unleashes Almost 20 Free Games This Month

April 2026 is already looking like a great month for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, with nearly 20 games coming to the service – and more on the way. Recent price hikes have put a damper on what had long been an exceptional deal, but Xbox recently revealing 14 day-one games coming to the Game Pass library still makes it an enticing offer.

April's additions to Game Pass have their fair share of brand-new releases as well. Three of the 18 games coming to Game Pass in April 2026 are being made available on their release day, according to Xbox Wire. Replaced launches and comes to Game Pass on April 14, with Vampire Crawlers following a week later on April 21, and Kiln shortly after on April 23.

All Xbox Game Pass Games For April 2026 Wave 1

Here's every April 2026 addition to Xbox Game Pass, the day they're added, and which subscription tier they're available to:

These are being presented as the first wave of Game Pass additions in April, meaning a handful more might be coming closer to the end of the month. 18 games is quite the haul, and a significant amount of variety means most subscribers will likely find at least one game that holds their interest.

Which April Games You Should Check Out First

With so many notable games coming to Game Pass this month, it can be hard to select only a few, but there are some notable standouts. Hades 2 came out late last year (after a significant early access period) on Switch, Switch 2, PC, and Mac, but is just now making its way to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. These ports arrive on April 14, the same day Hades 2 will be made available on Game Pass. Hades 2 is the sequel to the lauded 2020 godlike roguelike and has been just as celebrated.

Two of the day-one releases are also easy recommendations: Vampire Crawlers and Kiln. Vampire Crawlers is a Vampire Survivors spin-off, taking the characters, art style, and locations of its predecessor and remixing them into a dungeon-crawling, deck-building roguelike. Kiln is from first-party Xbox studio Double Fine (Psychonauts 2, Keeper), and has a lot of potential to be a charming party game. You get to create your own ceramic characters on a pottery wheel, then duke it out against your opponents in physics-based battles.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is a personal favorite, so it's easy to give a nod to the remaster, which will be more widely available on Game Pass starting April 16, nearly a year after it released. Oblivion Remastered does a great job modernizing the art style and making a few important gameplay tweaks while keeping Bethesda's original vision intact. More subscribers getting to experience it via Xbox Game Pass will be great, though you might not have time for such a large RPG in this packed of a month.