Epic Games Store Free Games: What's Free Now and What's Next
Update log (1)
- — The giveaway has rotated twice since this page was written. Beacon Pines, We Were Here Together and Caravan SandWitch have all closed. Cardpocalypse is free until 11 a.m. ET on Thursday 27 August 2026, and Epic has named two games for the week after it: Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition. Epic's page also lists an Albion Online cosmetic bundle alongside the giveaway — that one is an add-on whose normal price is zero, not a paid game being given away.
- One paid game is free on the Epic Games Store between Thursday 20 August and Thursday 27 August 2026: Cardpocalypse, a $24.99 card-battler. It is a Windows PC claim through the Epic launcher, and it is a keep-forever claim rather than a rental.
- Two are already named for the week after: Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition, both $24.99, free from 27 August to 3 September. Epic publishes the following week a week ahead, which is why they can be named as fact.
- Epic’s free page lists two things for the week to 27 August, and only one is a game being given away. The Epic Mage Bundle is an Albion Online add-on whose list price is already $0 — its own blurb advertises a value of more than $55, but Epic has never charged for it.
- Breathedge shows exactly how the feed misleads. It is free from 27 August, and then 75% off from 3 September. A roundup that reads the feed without reading the dates can call the same game free in a week when it costs $6.25.
One paid game is free on the Epic Games Store right now: Cardpocalypse, until 11 a.m. ET on Thursday 27 August 2026. The two after it are already named — Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition, free from 27 August to 3 September.
These are Windows PC downloads claimed through the Epic Games Store launcher. There is no console version of the giveaway, and claiming is permanent rather than a rental.
One thing to get out of the way first, because it is why free-games lists disagree with each other in the week to 27 August: Epic’s page lists two things as free, and only one of them is a game being given away.
What games are free on the Epic Games Store now?
Cardpocalypse, normally $24.99, until 27 August 2026. The second entry on Epic’s free page is an add-on, not a giveaway.
| Entry | Epic’s list price | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Cardpocalypse Standard Edition | $24.99 → free | A paid game, discounted 100% for the week |
| Epic Mage Bundle | $0 → $0 | An Albion Online add-on that has never had a price |
Cardpocalypse is a 2019 game developed by Gambrinous and published by Versus Evil — the same pairing Nintendo’s own store lists for it. Epic’s copy: “10-year old Jess accidentally gets everybody’s favorite collectible card game banned in Dudsdale Elementary — even worse, it’s her first day!” Mutants from the card game start coming to life, and it falls to Jess and her friends to stop them.
The Epic Mage Bundle is the one to be careful about. It is a cosmetic and progression bundle for Albion Online — vanity items, two mount skins, and what its blurb calls “a treasure trove of essential progression rewards”, advertised as “valued at more than $55”. That $55 is a claim about what the contents are worth inside the game. Epic’s list price for the bundle is zero, and it was zero before the giveaway window opened on 20 August.
The distinction is not a judgement call. In Epic’s feed, Cardpocalypse is typed BASE_GAME with an original price of $24.99 and a discounted price of zero. The bundle is typed ADD_ON with an original price of zero and a discounted price of zero. A real giveaway has a price to remove. This one never had one.
When does the Cardpocalypse giveaway end?
At 15:00 UTC on Thursday 27 August 2026, which is the moment Breathedge and Rival Stars replace it.
| Zone | Deadline |
|---|---|
| UTC | Thu 27 Aug, 15:00 |
| US Eastern | Thu 27 Aug, 11:00 a.m. |
| US Central | Thu 27 Aug, 10:00 a.m. |
| US Pacific | Thu 27 Aug, 8:00 a.m. |
| UK | Thu 27 Aug, 4:00 p.m. |
Epic runs this changeover every Thursday at the same moment, and the swap is instant rather than staggered — when Breathedge appears, Cardpocalypse returns to $24.99. Claiming happens on the store page rather than in the launcher, so there is no reason to leave it to the last hour.
What are the next free Epic Games Store games?
Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition, both normally $24.99, free from 27 August to 3 September 2026.
| Game | Price | Epic’s description |
|---|---|---|
| Breathedge | $24.99 | “Survive in outer space! Together with your immortal chicken, discover the truth behind your sudden spaceship crash” |
| Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition | $24.99 | “Stunning, realistic horses, an in-depth breeding system, and a range of exciting game modes” |
Breathedge is a 2021 survival-crafting game from RedRuins Softworks, published by HypeTrain Digital. You craft tools, pilot vehicles and take over space stations while working out why your ship came apart.
Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition comes from Prodigy Design. Epic’s copy promises “stunning, realistic horses, an in-depth breeding system, and a range of exciting game modes”, and describes it as a racing and riding game rather than a management one.
Epic names the following week’s giveaway a week ahead, which is the only reason these can be stated as fact rather than as rumour. Anything named beyond 3 September has not been announced — Epic does not publish more than one week forward, so any list promising September’s full slate is guessing.
Are the other games on Epic’s free games page actually free?
No. The same feed that publishes the giveaways also publishes deep discounts, and only the 100%-off entries are free.
| Title | Offer | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Lost Castle: The Old Ones Awaken | 50% off, add-on ($3.99) | 30 Aug – 13 Sep |
| Monument Valley | 75% off ($7.99) | 3 – 17 Sep |
| Castlevania Anniversary Collection | 60% off ($19.99) | 3 – 17 Sep |
| Breathedge | 75% off ($24.99) | 3 – 17 Sep |
| Ghostrunner 2 | 80% off ($39.99) | 10 – 24 Sep |
| LISA: The Definitive Edition | 50% off ($24.99) | 17 Sep – 2 Oct |
Look at the Breathedge row. The same game is free from 27 August and then 75% off from 3 September, because those are two separate offers on the same title in the same feed. A roundup that reads the feed without reading the dates can tell you Breathedge is free during a week when it costs $6.25.
That is the general failure mode here. Three further titles sit in the feed with no promotion attached at all — no window, no discount, not claimable — and they end up in “free games” lists for no better reason than being in the same response. If a list names a title without naming its window, that is the thing to check.
How can you tell a real giveaway from a listing?
Two fields, and you can check them yourself in about ten seconds. Epic’s store shows everything on one page, so the useful skill is not knowing this week’s answer — it is being able to get next week’s without waiting for anyone to write it up.
| Check | A real giveaway | Not a giveaway |
|---|---|---|
| Normal price | Non-zero, and shown struck through | Already $0, or no price shown |
| What it is | A base game or a bundle you could otherwise buy | An add-on, DLC or in-game pack |
| The discount | 100% — the price falls to zero | Anything less, however large |
| The window | A start and an end date, one week apart | A longer window, or none at all |
Applied to the current page: Cardpocalypse passes on all four. The Epic Mage Bundle fails the first two — no normal price, and it is an add-on for a free-to-play game. Breathedge passes for its 27 August week and fails from 3 September, when its 75%-off window makes it a discount rather than a gift.
The trap that catches most lists is the third row. An 80%-off headline on a $39.99 game looks like a giveaway in a list that only prints titles, and it still costs $8. The rule that survives every rotation: if nobody names the window and the discount, assume it is a sale.
Can you play these free games on PS5, Xbox or Switch?
Not through this giveaway. It is a Windows PC offer, claimed in the Epic launcher, and nothing about it reaches a console.
Cardpocalypse does sell separately on Nintendo Switch — Nintendo’s own store lists it, with the same publisher and developer Epic names. So a Switch owner who wants it still has to buy it; the free week does nothing for them.
We are not going to tell you whether it is on Xbox or PlayStation. The obvious product URLs did not resolve, and a 404 from a URL we guessed is evidence about our guess, not about the game — so that question is left open rather than answered badly.
Do you keep Epic Games Store free games after the week ends?
Yes. The claim is a purchase at a 100% discount, not a loan.
Epic’s store page for each free title lists the base game at a full discount and hands it over with the same Get button used for a paid purchase, which is why nothing has to be renewed afterwards and why there is no subscription to lapse. That is the practical difference from the console services running in parallel — the PS Plus monthly lineup stays in your library only while you keep subscribing, and Xbox Game Pass additions leave the catalogue on a schedule of their own.
The only deadline that binds you is the claim itself. Add Cardpocalypse to your library before 27 August and you never have to think about it again. Miss it, and no amount of subscribing later brings it back — on the Epic Games Store, expired means gone rather than postponed.
The bottom line
Claim Cardpocalypse before 11 a.m. ET on Thursday 27 August 2026 and a $24.99 game is permanently yours. Ignore the Epic Mage Bundle sitting next to it unless you play Albion Online, because it is free every other week too.
Come back on 27 August for Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing, and treat any list naming a September giveaway as a guess — Epic has not published one.
For the same question across Steam, GOG and Prime Gaming as well as Epic, our free PC games this week page tracks all four stores in one place.
How we verified this
THE LIVE AND UPCOMING GIVEAWAYS COME FROM EPIC’S OWN PROMOTION FEED, the endpoint the store itself reads, queried with country=US at 14:32 UTC on 21 August 2026. It returns Cardpocalypse Standard Edition and the Epic Mage Bundle at a discount setting of 0 — Epic’s way of expressing 100% off — running 2026-08-20T15:00Z to 2026-08-27T15:00Z, and Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing on the same terms for the following week. A deliberately wrong endpoint path was requested as a control and returned 404.
🔴 ONE OF THE TWO CURRENT “FREE” ENTRIES IS NOT A GAME BEING GIVEN AWAY, AND THE FEED SAYS SO IN A FIELD MOST ROUNDUPS DO NOT READ. Cardpocalypse carries offerType BASE_GAME with an original price of $24.99 discounted to zero. The Epic Mage Bundle carries offerType ADD_ON, maps to Albion Online, and has an original price of 0 — it is not being discounted, because there was never a price. Its own store copy advertises “a magical Free Gift valued at more than $55”, which is a claim about in-game contents rather than about what Epic charges. The mechanical test is the pair of fields, not the wording: a real giveaway has a non-zero original price and a zero discounted price.
PRICES ARE EPIC’S US LIST PRICES, taken from that same feed rather than from the store pages. The store renders in the currency and the local clock of whoever is looking, so a page read from outside the United States shows a local price and a local deadline; both would be wrong for most readers. The times in this article are converted from Epic’s UTC timestamps with the IANA timezone database, not by subtracting a fixed offset.
⚠️ THE DISCOUNTS ARE NOT GIVEAWAYS AND THEY SHARE A FEED WITH THEM. Six titles sit alongside the free ones with discount settings between 20 and 50 — 80% to 50% off — in windows running from 30 August to 2 October. Breathedge appears twice for two different reasons: at a setting of 0 for its free week from 27 August, and at 25, meaning 75% off, from 3 September. Three further titles appear in the feed with no promotion attached at all; with no window and no discount they are not claimable, so they are not listed here.
THE CONSOLE CHECK WAS RUN AT THE PLATFORM HOLDER’S OWN STORE, with a control that had to fail. Nintendo’s product page for Cardpocalypse returns 200 and names the game 85 times, and lists the publisher as Versus Evil and the developer as Gambrinous — both matching what Epic’s feed says. A nonsense product slug on the same path returns 404. No claim is made here about Xbox or PlayStation versions: a guessed product URL returned 404, and a 404 from a URL we invented is evidence about the URL, not about the game.
DESCRIPTIONS USE THE STORES’ OWN WORDS. Where this page describes what a game is, the phrasing is Epic’s own store copy from the feed, not a paraphrase and not an assessment. Release years come from the feed’s effectiveDate field for Cardpocalypse (2019) and Breathedge (2021); the other two entries carry an effectiveDate equal to their promotion start, so no release year is stated for them rather than guessing one.
EPIC’S OWN HELP PAGE ON WHAT CLAIMING MEANS COULD NOT BE READ: it returns 403 to us. The description here of how a claim works is therefore taken from what the store visibly does — it lists the base game at a 100% discount and hands it over with the same button used for a purchase — and not from a quotation of Epic’s terms.
⚠️ THIS PAGE ROTATES EVERY THURSDAY AT 15:00 UTC. The windows named here are the ones live and announced on 21 August 2026. Anything past 3 September had not been announced when this was checked, and Epic does not announce more than one week ahead.