By Jacob Miller | Jul 31, 2026
The final list of eight departing titles grew by one from earlier in the month when Whiskerwood, a cozy city builder that joined the service in November 2025, was quietly added to the outgoing wave. The full list of July 31 departures is Celeste, Crusader Kings 3, Whiskerwood, My Friendly Neighborhood, Back to the Dawn, Sniper Elite: Resistance, Rain World, and Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord.
The Most Notable Departures and Their Legacy on the Service
Celeste leads the departures in terms of critical standing. The acclaimed platformer carries a 92 average score on OpenCritic, placing it in the top percentile of all titles the aggregator tracks, and it has been widely regarded as one of the most beloved indie games in recent years. Its combination of precise, challenging gameplay and an emotionally resonant story made it a standout addition whenever new subscribers discovered it through the service.
Crusader Kings 3 is the other major headline departure. The grand strategy game holds a 91 average on OpenCritic and brings a different kind of significance to its exit, having originally joined Xbox Game Pass as a day-one release back in September 2020. That means it is leaving after nearly six years on the service, making it one of the longest-tenured titles to depart in recent memory. The comparison to Payday 2, which ended a nine-year run on the service just over a month ago in late June 2026, is hard to avoid. Both represent a class of long-serving titles that have been quietly providing value to subscribers for years, and their removal within such a short window of each other represents a notable shift in the catalogue's long-term composition.
What This Means for July and What Comes Next
July 2026 will go down as the first month this year where Xbox Game Pass's removals exceeded its additions, a milestone that is worth noting even if it does not necessarily signal a sustained trend. Whether August reverses that pattern remains to be seen, though the service already has four confirmed additions lined up for next month. Among them is Beast of Reincarnation, an original action RPG from Game Freak, the studio best known for developing the mainline Pokemon series. That is a notable arrival in its own right and could go some way toward compensating for the quality lost through today's departures. Subscribers looking to make the most of Celeste, Crusader Kings 3, or any of the other titles leaving today have until the end of the day before they are removed from the catalogue.
