6 January 2026

Xbox Game Pass Subscribers Have Two Surprise Games to Play Today

By newsgame

Xbox Game Pass dropped two games on January 6 that hadn’t previously been announced. Each month brings a handful of titles to the platform while others leave it, and some of these changes get more fanfare than others. Thankfully, this month’s big surprise is good news for Xbox Game Pass subscribers, as there are more new games to play than it seemed at first glance.

This time around, Microsoft has been relatively quiet about what’s coming to its gaming subscription service. By the time it revealed the five games leaving Xbox Game Pass in January 2026, it had only confirmed two additions for the month, but now things are starting to clear up, and there’s a lot to look forward to. Xbox has announced the full wave one lineup, confirming that there are, in fact, more than two games coming in January, including a couple that are available right now.

new xbox game pass games coming january 2026

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Just Confirmed 2 More Day 1 Games for January 2026

Xbox Game Pass subscribers can now look forward to two more day one games that are coming to the service in January 2026.

Xbox Game Pass subscribers can play Little Nightmares: Enhanced Edition and Brews & Bastards starting today, January 6. The surprise drops are good news for horror fans, as Xbox Game Pass lost a groundbreaking indie horror game on the last day of 2025, but now there’s a different, highly regarded alternative with Little Nightmares. It’s also the Enhanced Edition, which offers players several modernizations, including 4K 60FPS visuals and ray-tracing support, which help bring the 2017 title up to the standard that users on current-gen systems may expect. The newer version also lets players choose between higher levels of detail and a higher framerate depending on their preferences, which may be par for the course today but wasn’t as widely available across indie titles nine years ago.

New Xbox Game Pass Games Available on January 6

Little Nightmares: Enhanced Edition
Brews & Bastards

Some fans regard Little Nightmares as the best side-scrolling horror game to date, and while there are now two sequels and a mobile spin-off, the original still holds up on its own. Brews & Bastards is a newer game, coming out in September 2025, so it doesn’t have many reviews yet, but most of its Steam feedback is positive. The game is a twin-stick shooter and dungeon crawler that supports both single-player and two-to-four-player co-op gameplay. Both titles are also available to all Xbox Game Pass tiers, so players won’t need a more expensive subscription to enjoy the surprise drops.

There’s a lot left in 2026 to go, but getting more games than expected in a month is a welcome surprise and, hopefully, a promising sign of things to come. In 2025, Xbox Game Pass added 216 games to its library while removing just 128, resulting in a net gain of 88 titles by the end of the year. Those additions included some massive day-one releases like Hollow Knight: Silksong and Game of the Year winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It could be hard to follow this year, but it looks like the service is off to a strong start.

The pressure is on for Xbox to impress subscribers for more reasons than just a strong 2025. Last year, Xbox Game Pass got a $10 price hike, which many gamers and industry insiders alike were less than thrilled about. Microsoft also raised hardware prices in the past year, so as things keep getting more expensive, audiences will naturally want more or better content to make up for the expense. If and how Xbox Game Pass will meet these rising expectations remains to be seen, and it’s too early in the year to say anything for sure. For now, though, there’s at least a nice little surprise in the form of Little Nightmares and Brews & Bastards.