Gears of War: E-Day headlines the second wave of September Game Pass with 14 games

Microsoft has now revealed the second batch of September 2026 games for Xbox Game Pass and, as reported by IGN España, the list is anything but short: 14 titles that will be rolling into the service over the coming weeks. The main event is Gears of War: E-Day, the return of the Marcus Fenix saga, but it isn't travelling alone. Alongside it come Dune: Awakening, the survival game set on Arrakis, and Minecraft Dungeons 2, the sequel to Mojang's co-op dungeon crawler. All three are confirmed for the Ultimate and PC Game Pass plans.

A new Gears landing on Game Pass surprises no one, since it comes from an Xbox first-party studio, but bundling it into the same wave as Dune and Minecraft Dungeons 2 turns this second half of September into one of the most loaded of the year for subscribers. For a community like ours, with players spread across the Americas and Europe who share a squad but not always a budget, knowing what's coming in and on which plan is gold when it comes to organising game nights.

What you need to know

• The second batch of September 2026 adds 14 games to the Xbox Game Pass catalogue.
• Gears of War: E-Day is the headliner of the wave.
• Dune: Awakening and Minecraft Dungeons 2 are also joining the service.
• Those three titles are confirmed for the Ultimate and PC Game Pass plans.
• The full list, with the rest of the 14 games, is detailed in the original IGN España report.

Three heavyweights in a single wave

Gears of War: E-Day is the card Xbox has been holding for a long time. It's a new chapter in one of the brand's most iconic franchises and, as usually happens with first-party releases, it arrives on the service so any subscriber on the relevant plans can play it without paying extra. For the competitive side of Underworld Lordz, the takeaway is clear: if the multiplayer delivers, we'll have a lot of people trying it at the same time, and that usually translates into full lobbies and a scene that takes off fast.

Dune: Awakening is a very different kind of game. We're talking survival in a shared open world, where your clan and coordination matter as much as your aim. Its arrival on Game Pass opens the door for entire squads to organise and settle on Arrakis without anyone having to buy the game on their own, something that in survival MMOs makes the difference between a group that gets going and one that stays in the hangar.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 rounds out the trio and targets the more casual and family-friendly audience: co-op, accessible and easy to recommend to anyone joining the community with no prior shooter experience. It's not a game for ranked play, but it's perfect for filling relaxed streams and winning over that friend who never dares to try anything competitive.

What changes for each plan

The important detail IGN España provides is that the three big titles are confirmed for Ultimate and PC Game Pass. In other words, anyone on the PC plan isn't missing out on any of the main attractions. What the source doesn't detail in its summary is the availability of each of the 14 games across the other tiers of the service, so if you're on a lower plan we recommend checking the full list before assuming you'll have access to everything.

This kind of plan-based segmentation has long been how Microsoft pushes people towards the more expensive subscription. It's nothing new, but it's worth keeping in mind: the wave sounds huge, but the real value you get depends on how much you pay each month.

Our take

From the Underworld Lordz newsroom, we see this second batch as one of the most interesting Game Pass has offered in a long time, especially for its variety. A heavyweight shooter, a shared-world survival game and an accessible co-op title cover three very different ways of playing as a community, and that's exactly what a team with per-game rooms and members on two continents needs. For content creators the message is just as clear: a new Gears available to millions of subscribers from day one means a guaranteed audience for weeks, and Dune delivers the kind of emergent stories that work really well on stream.

That said, we're not going to applaud without reservations. The strategy of reserving the biggest hitters for Ultimate and PC leaves anyone who can't or won't pay for the top plan on the sidelines, and that creates friction within squads themselves: if three teammates have access to E-Day and two don't, game night falls apart. On top of that, the logic of the rotating catalogue is the same as ever: 14 games come in today, others will leave tomorrow, and anyone who builds their competitive routine around a game on the service runs the risk of losing it when they least expect it.

Our practical recommendation is simple: use the wave to experiment, to find out which game truly hooks the group, and once you know, consider buying it. Game Pass is an excellent gateway, but it shouldn't be the foundation of anyone's competitive season.

What do you think?

Between Gears of War: E-Day, Dune: Awakening and Minecraft Dungeons 2, the wave has something for every profile on the team, but it also reopens the debate about plans and the real value of the subscription. Tell us in the team chat or on our Discord: which of these games is going to bring your squad together this month, and do you think Ultimate is worth it for this batch?