PS Plus October 2026 Games: F1 25, Hunt: Showdown 1896 and More

Sony has posted the PlayStation Plus monthly games for October, and the mix is racing, horror and giant insects. From Tuesday, October 6, every member on Essential, Extra or Premium can add F1 25 on PS5, Hunt: Showdown 1896 on PS5 and Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 on PS5 and PS4 to their library. The window closes on Monday, November 2, and as always the games stay playable for as long as your subscription is active.

The one we did not expect is F1 25. It is EA's official game of the 2025 Formula One season, and it is arriving in the monthly tier while that season is still fresh in memory. Hunt: Showdown 1896 is the other headline pick, and it is well timed for October since it is a horror shooter at heart.

Video: PlayStation on YouTube

What the three games actually are

F1 25 covers the full 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship. On the single player side you get the Career mode and My Team 2.0, where you run a team as its owner rather than just driving for one. The new addition this year sits in F1 World, a multiplayer mode where you and your friends race as a squad against AI drivers instead of against each other. If you have never tried the series, this is a low-risk way in.

Hunt: Showdown 1896 is Crytek's extraction shooter, and it plays nothing like a normal multiplayer game. You drop into a corrupted late 19th century backwater, track down a monstrous boss, kill it, claim the bounty and then try to reach an extraction point while every other hunter on the map tries to take it from you. You can go in alone or bring up to two teammates. It is slow, tense and unforgiving, and death costs you your hunter and their gear. For a game you are picking up at no extra cost, that risk is a lot easier to swallow, and it is the one we would tell most PS5 owners to at least try this month.

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is the lighter pick. It takes the EDF formula of shooting enormous bugs and robots by the hundred and rebuilds it in voxel form, with a cast of blocky soldiers to collect from across the mainline games and the spin-offs. You build a squad of four from the soldiers you have unlocked, pick their gear and deploy. It supports four player online co-op and two player local split-screen on both PS5 and PS4, which makes it the only game of the three that works as a couch game.

The September deadline and the extras

The more urgent date is Monday, October 5. That is the last day to claim the September lineup: Sniper Elite: Resistance, MLB The Show 26, Wobbly Life and Chained Echoes. Claiming takes a few seconds per game from the PlayStation Store, and you do not have to download anything to lock them in.

October also brings a few extras on the side. Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives on the Sony Pictures Core app on October 6, and members can claim limited-edition avatars tied to it at no extra cost in the app until the promotion ends on October 20. There is also a set of horror-themed in-game packs for members, under the HorrorFest label: a Call of Duty: Warzone Horror Bundle from October 1, a Hunt: Showdown 1896 Starter Pack from October 6 and an Overwatch 2 Dragur Reinhardt pack with five tier skips from October 7. You need to own each base game to use its pack, which is fine for Hunt since it is in this month's lineup anyway.

Sony's usual note applies: the lineup can differ by region, so check the PlayStation Store on October 6 if you are outside North America or Europe. Our take is that this is a solid month rather than a spectacular one. F1 25 is the surprise, Hunt is the one worth your evenings, and World Brothers 2 is there for anyone who wants something silly to play with a friend on the same sofa.