Xbox Game Pass Losing 8 Games Today, Including Some of Its Highest-Rated Titles

Xbox Game Pass is losing eight titles later today, July 31. The departures include some of the service’s highest-rated games and will bring the total number of Xbox Game Pass July 2026 removals to 18.

A mid-month update to the Xbox app initially listed seven Xbox Game Pass departures for the July 31 catalog rotation. One more game has been added to the list since then: Whiskerwood, a cozy city builder that has been on the service since November 2025.

Crusader Kings 3 and 7 Other Titles Leaving Xbox Game Pass Today

Xbox Game Pass is thus set to lose eight titles in total on July 31. The list of removals is headlined by Celeste, a renowned platformer with a 92 average score on OpenCritic, which makes it one of the highest-rated games in Microsoft’s subscription catalog. The departure wave also includes Crusader Kings 3, a comparably acclaimed title with a 91 average score on OpenCritic. Beyond those two titles and Whiskerwood, the Xbox Game Pass July 31 removals encompass My Friendly Neighborhood, Back to the Dawn, Sniper Elite: Resistance, Rain World, and Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord.

All Xbox Game Pass Games Leaving Today (July 31, 2026)

[▲] Game

[▲▲] Added

Stint Duration

[▲] OpenCritic Avg.

How Long To Beat

My Friendly Neighborhood

Jul 2025

1 year

79

5–14 hours

Whiskerwood

Nov 2025

8 months

N/A

~14

Back to the Dawn

Jul 2025

1 year

79

29–73 hours

Celeste

Aug 2023

2 years, 11 months

92

8–39 hours

Crusader Kings III

Sep 2020

5 years, 10 months

91

73–586 hours

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Feb 2023

3 years, 5 months

76

53–171 hours

Rain World

Aug 2025

11 months

69

20–70 hours

Sniper Elite: Resistance

Jan 2025

1 year, 6 months

73

9–27 hours

In addition to being one of the highest-rated games in Microsoft’s subscription catalog, Crusader Kings 3 is also among its longest-serving titles. It originally joined Xbox Game Pass as a day-one release in September 2020 and is now set to leave after nearly six years. This marks the second departure of a similarly long-serving game in just over a month, after Payday 2 ended its 9-year-stint on Xbox Game Pass in late June 2026.

Xbox Game Pass 2026 Stats: Monthly Catalog Changes

A glowing red Xbox Game Pass sign in front of a red-tinted desert scene from the first Planet of Lana game. Dominik Bošnjak / Game Rant | Source images: Xbox, Wishfully / Thunderful Publishing

📅

Added

Removed

Net

YoY Change

January

18

12

+6 games

+5

February

20

5

+15 games

+23

March

16

8

+8 games

+16

April

18

14

+4 games

+4

May

19

10

+9 games

+2

June

15

13

+2 games

-2

July

15

18

-3 games

-11

Total

124

80

+44 games

+40 vs 2025

With the upcoming departures, Microsoft’s subscription library will have lost 18 titles in July 2026 while adding only 15, excluding XGP Premium-only releases. July will therefore become the first month of 2026 in which Xbox Game Pass removes more games than it adds.







Whether Microsoft’s flagship gaming service returns to growth next month remains to be seen. For now, Xbox Game Pass has four confirmed August 2026 releases, including Beast of Reincarnation, an original action RPG from Pokemon developer Game Freak.

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