Game Pass July Wave 2 Is Stacked: Halo Campaign Evolved and Game Freak's New RPG Both Land Day One

We look at every Game Pass wave with the same question: is there anything here you would have actually paid for? This time the answer is easy. The second July 2026 wave, detailed on Xbox Wire, carries two genuinely big day one releases, and one of them is Halo.

Halo and Game Freak headline the wave

Halo: Campaign Evolved hits Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass on July 28, the same day the remake launches everywhere else. That means the modernized Combat Evolved campaign, with four player online co-op and three new missions, is included in your subscription on console, PC, handheld and cloud from day one.

The quieter surprise sits at the end of the wave. Beast of Reincarnation, the original action RPG from Game Freak, the studio the whole world knows for Pokemon, arrives August 4 as a day one release on Ultimate and PC Game Pass. A brand new IP from that team landing straight into a subscription is not something we expected to type this year.

The full lineup, and what is leaving

• The Planet Crafter, July 21 (Ultimate, Premium, PC)
• Shift at Midnight, July 22, day one (Ultimate, PC)
• Hell is Us, July 23 (Ultimate, Premium, PC)
• Halo: Campaign Evolved, July 28, day one (Ultimate, PC)
• Mistfall Hunter, July 30, day one (Ultimate, PC)
• Corsair Cove, July 31 (PC only)
• Heretic + Hexen, August 4 (Ultimate, Premium, PC)
• Beast of Reincarnation, August 4, day one (Ultimate, PC)

Shift at Midnight is a co-op detective horror game set in a roadside gas station, out today. Mistfall Hunter is a dark fantasy extraction RPG, and Heretic + Hexen brings the classic dark fantasy shooters back for Premium members too.

The bill for all this arrives at the end of the month. Back to the Dawn, Celeste, Crusader Kings 3, Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, My Friendly Neighborhood, Rain World, Sniper Elite Resistance and Whiskerwood all leave on July 31. Celeste hurts the most; if it has been sitting in your backlog, this is the week.

Our take

This is the strongest wave in months, but read the tier column before you celebrate. Every day one headliner, Halo included, skips Game Pass Premium and lands only on Ultimate and PC. Premium members get The Planet Crafter, Hell is Us and Heretic + Hexen, which is fine, but the games people will actually talk about sit behind the more expensive tier. That pattern is now consistent enough that we would call it the strategy, not an exception.