Epic Games Store Free Games in July and August 2026: The Full List
- Two games are free on the Epic Games Store between Thursday 6 August and Thursday 13 August 2026: Beacon Pines, a $19.99 illustrated mystery, and We Were Here Together, a $12.99 two-player co-op puzzle game. Both are Windows PC downloads through the Epic launcher, and both are claims rather than rentals — nothing expires out of your library afterwards.
- Caravan SandWitch is already confirmed as the next one, free from 13 to 20 August 2026. Epic publishes the following week’s giveaway in advance, which is why this one can be named before it goes live.
- Everything given away in July 2026 is gone. Six weekly windows ran between 25 June and 6 August — the last of them, OTXO and Sol Cesto, closed at 11 a.m. ET on 6 August. Epic giveaways do not come back later in the month, so a missed window is missed for good.
- Only one of the two current games works on your own. We Were Here Together cannot be played solo — it needs a second person who also owns it, which is the strongest argument for claiming it during a week when it costs both of you nothing.
Two games are free on the Epic Games Store until 13 August 2026, and the one after them is already named. Between Thursday 6 August and Thursday 13 August 2026, Epic is giving away Beacon Pines and We Were Here Together. From 13 to 20 August it is Caravan SandWitch. Everything Epic gave away in July has already closed.
These are Windows PC downloads claimed through the Epic Games Store launcher — there is no console version of the giveaway, though all three games sell separately on consoles as well. Checked on 6 August 2026.
Which games are free on the Epic Games Store in August 2026?
Beacon Pines and We Were Here Together, together worth $32.98 at Epic’s US list prices, are free until 13 August 2026.
| Game | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Beacon Pines | $19.99 | Illustrated mystery adventure, single player |
| We Were Here Together | $12.99 | Two-player co-op puzzle game, online only |
Beacon Pines is a 2022 adventure from the studio Hiding Spot, published by Fellow Traveller. You play both a boy called Luka and the reader of the book he lives inside, collecting charm words that get slotted into blanks at turning points to send the story down a different branch. Epic rates it 12+ for mild swearing and lists it as single player.
We Were Here Together is the third entry in a co-op series by the Dutch studio Total Mayhem Games, released in October 2019 after We Were Here in 2017 and We Were Here Too in 2018. Two Antarctic researchers answer a distress call, cross the frozen wastes, and end up separated inside a medieval castle with a walkie-talkie each and, as the store puts it, nothing but their wits. It supports cross-platform play, so your partner does not have to be on the Epic version — but they do have to own it somewhere.
When does the Beacon Pines and We Were Here Together giveaway end?
At 15:00 UTC on Thursday 13 August 2026, which is when the next giveaway replaces it.
| Zone | Deadline |
|---|---|
| UTC | Thu 13 Aug, 15:00 |
| US Eastern | Thu 13 Aug, 11 a.m. |
| UK | Thu 13 Aug, 4 p.m. |
| US Pacific | Thu 13 Aug, 8 a.m. |
Epic runs this changeover every Thursday at the same moment, and the swap is instant rather than staggered — the moment Caravan SandWitch appears, the two current games return to full price. Claiming is done on the store page itself rather than in the launcher, so there is no reason to leave it until the last hour.
What is the next free game on the Epic Games Store?
Caravan SandWitch, free from 13 to 20 August 2026, normally $24.99.
It is a 2024 exploration game from Studio Plane Toast, published by Dear Villagers, in which you drive a van across Cigalo, a planet the store describes as a sci-fi take on Provence, searching for a missing sister. The pitch on its own store page is “no combat, no death, no timer”. Epic lists it as single player, Windows only, with controller support; it also sells on PlayStation, so the giveaway is the PC route to a game console owners have been able to buy since 2024.
Epic names the following week’s giveaway a week ahead, which is the only reason this one can be stated as fact rather than as a rumour. Anything named beyond 20 August has not been announced.
Which games were free on the Epic Games Store in July 2026?
Eleven games, across the six weekly windows that touched July, and every one of those windows has closed.
| Window | Free games |
|---|---|
| 25 Jun – 2 Jul | RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 Complete Edition, Voidwrought |
| 2 – 9 Jul | I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream; River City Girls 2 |
| 9 – 16 Jul | Nova Lands, Tattoo Tycoon |
| 16 – 23 Jul | Echo Generation: Midnight Edition, Luto |
| 23 – 30 Jul | Foretales |
| 30 Jul – 6 Aug | OTXO, Sol Cesto |
Two things in that table are worth pointing out. The week of 23 July had one game rather than two, so a roundup promising “two free games every week” was already wrong last month. And the final July window, OTXO and Sol Cesto, closed at 11 a.m. ET on 6 August — the same moment the current pair went live. Epic does not overlap the two: each of the six windows began at the exact moment the previous one ended, and none of those eleven titles appears in the current or the announced window.
Three more games were free to keep during July without being part of the Thursday rotation, because their developers ran the offers themselves: KeepUp Survival until 19 July, NoRush! – Tower Edition until 20 July, and Together After Dark until 27 July. All three still turn up in “free games this month” lists with no expiry date attached to them. All three are over.
Can you play these free games on PS5, Xbox or Switch?
Not through this giveaway — it is a Windows PC offer only. Both of the 6–13 August games sell on consoles too, and so does Caravan SandWitch.
| Game | Consoles it also sells on |
|---|---|
| Beacon Pines | Switch, Xbox Series X|S |
| We Were Here Together | PlayStation, Xbox, Switch |
Beacon Pines has a Nintendo store listing and an Xbox store listing, and no PlayStation listing — searching the PlayStation Store for it returns nothing by that name, while the same search for We Were Here Together returns seven games in the series. If you are on a PS5 and wanted Beacon Pines, the free week is not just the cheapest way to get it, it is the only way.
For We Were Here Together the console versions matter for a different reason. Because the game is cross-platform, a friend on PlayStation or Xbox who already owns it can partner with you on the Epic copy. What neither of you can do is play it alone.
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 −100% 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 in August — the PS Plus August 2026 lineup stays in your library only while you keep subscribing, and August’s Xbox Game Pass additions leave the catalogue on a schedule of their own.
The only deadline that binds you is the claim itself. Add the game to your library before 13 August and you never have to think about it again; miss it, and no amount of subscribing later brings it back.
Are the other games on Epic’s free games page actually free?
No. Epic’s promotion feed carries deep discounts alongside the giveaways, and only the 100%-off entries are free.
| Title | Offer | Window |
|---|---|---|
| Lost Castle: The Old Ones Awaken | 50% off (add-on) | 30 Aug – 13 Sep |
| Monument Valley | 75% off | 3 – 17 Sep |
| Ghostrunner 2 | 80% off | 10 – 24 Sep |
| LISA: The Definitive Edition | 50% off | 17 Sep – 2 Oct |
None of these is a giveaway. They sit in the same feed that publishes the weekly free games, which is how they end up in roundups under headlines about free games, and 80% off a $39.99 game is still $8. If a list names a title without naming the discount, that is the thing to check.
The bottom line
Claim Beacon Pines and We Were Here Together before 11 a.m. ET on Thursday 13 August 2026 and they are yours permanently, for a total of $32.98 that you did not spend. Come back on 13 August for Caravan SandWitch. Everything from July, including the three developer-run giveaways, has already expired — and on the Epic Games Store, expired means gone rather than postponed.
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 on 6 August 2026 at 16:05 UTC. It returns Beacon Pines and We Were Here Together at a 0% discount setting — Epic’s way of expressing 100% off — running from 2026-08-06T15:00Z to 2026-08-13T15:00Z, and Caravan SandWitch on the same terms for the following week. The store’s own free-games page was read in a browser as a second check and shows the same three titles under “Free Now” and “Coming Soon”. A deliberately wrong endpoint path was requested as a control and returned 404.
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 JULY WEEK-BY-WEEK LIST IS NOT FROM EPIC — that feed only carries what is live or announced. It comes from two running lists maintained independently of each other, which agree on every window and every title from 25 June onwards, and whose entries for 6 and 13 August match what Epic’s own feed says. The one week that looks like an error is not one: 23 to 30 July had a single game, Foretales, where the other weeks had two.
THE THREE EXTRA JULY GIVEAWAYS WERE RUN BY DEVELOPERS, not by Epic, which is why they sit outside the Thursday rhythm and outside the feed. KeepUp Survival, NoRush! – Tower Edition and Together After Dark all closed during July, on the 19th, 20th and 27th. They are listed here because they still appear in monthly roundups without an expiry attached.
DESCRIPTIONS USE THE STORES’ OWN WORDS, and two adjectives were cut on a re-check because they were not anyone’s but ours: Beacon Pines had been called short and hand-drawn, and neither word appears in Epic’s copy or Steam’s. The same pass replaced a paraphrase of Caravan SandWitch’s setting with the developer’s own “Provence-like”, and replaced a description of how We Were Here Together splits information between its two players — true of the series, but not something either store says — with what the store does say. Beacon Pines' studio, publisher, release date and premise were confirmed a second time against Steam, which agrees with Epic on all four. Steam’s release dates also settle the series order that makes We Were Here Together the third game: 2017, 2018, then October 2019.
PLATFORMS WERE CHECKED AT EACH PLATFORM HOLDER’S OWN STORE, not at aggregators, and each check was paired with a control request that had to fail. Nintendo’s product page for Beacon Pines returns 200 and names the game 85 times, while a nonsense product slug on the same path returns 404. The Xbox store page behaves the same way against an invalid product ID. We Were Here Together was found by name in PlayStation’s and Xbox’s own search results, and its Switch version is confirmed by the developer’s own launch announcement, which returns 200 where a made-up post slug on the same path returns 404. Nintendo’s search page could not be used for it at all: the page is rendered client-side, and a nonsense query returned a response four bytes different from the real one, so that route cannot tell a hit from a miss and was abandoned rather than trusted. The Xbox generation was read from the platform list attached to Beacon Pines’ own product ID rather than from the nearest one on the page — that page carries a couple of dozen such lists, most of them belonging to games in its recommendation rows, and several of those do include Xbox One. Beacon Pines’ own does not. Search summaries claiming Beacon Pines is absent from PlayStation are consistent with what PlayStation’s own search returns: querying it produces no product of that name, while the same query pattern for We Were Here Together returns seven titles in the series including this one, and a nonsense query returns no products at all.
THE DISCOUNTS ARE NOT GIVEAWAYS AND ARE FLAGGED HERE BECAUSE THEY SHARE A FEED WITH THEM. Ghostrunner 2, Monument Valley, LISA: The Definitive Edition and a Lost Castle add-on all appear alongside the free titles with discount settings between 20 and 50 — 80% to 50% off — and dated windows in late August and September. Four further titles appear in that feed with no promotion attached at all; with no window and no discount they are not claimable, so they are not listed in this article.
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 −100% and hands it over with the same button used for a purchase — and not from a quotation of Epic’s terms.