2026 will be a sad year for players on PS4 as PlayStation reveals that its offerings for them on its PS Plus service will all but cease. The PS Plus subscription service hasn’t exactly hit the nail on the head recently. The PS Plus Essential February drop delivered players a fairly underwhelming package of games, a fact not helped by Payday 3 being the headliner over a year after its playerbase dramatically trailed off shortly after launch. Even before that, though, the PS Plus Essential January drop offered Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League after its developer, Rocksteady, had announced the end of its seasonal content. Is it any wonder that players are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of inspiration from the service?.

From Sony’s perspective the free games are little more than a means of sweetening the pot for players frustrated that they have to pay to use online services in games they’ve already paid for, of course, and it seems that the Extra and Premium tiers is getting all of the goodies when it comes to the big titles – especially after the PS Plus Extra and Premium January drop came with God of War: Ragnarok. And it looks like, in a move that we could have seen coming for some time, PS Plus has revealed that it is trimming the fat of its reveals, much to the frustration of players who haven’t upgraded from their PS4 consoles yet.

In a blog post announcement that players have foreseen for some time, PlayStation has revealed that starting in 2026, it will no longer be prioritising the chance for players to download free PS4 games as part of its PS Plus subscription service. This includes game drops for Essential subscribers, and game appearances in the Game Catalog that is available on the service’s PS Plus Extra tier. “As many of our players are currently playing on PS5 and have shifted toward redeeming and accessing PS5 titles from the Monthly Games and Game Catalog benefit, PlayStation Plus is also evolving with this trend and will focus on offering PS5 titles through the Monthly Games and Game Catalog benefit starting January 2026,” Sony Interactive Entertainment’s director Adam Michel has said in the most recent PlayStation Essential update. “We may still provide titles that can be playable on both PS4 and PS5 consoles after this date.”.

What this means is that games playable on the PS4 could still make appearances on the service, but it will entirely be at Sony’s discretion, and will be far less common than they are now. This means that the many players using the PS4 – estimated to be 49 million users according to a Sony report from April 2024 – will no longer get free games to play as frequently as they do now. This is a big shame going forward, but it’s important to note that players won’t suddenly lose the chance to play Game Catalog titles, and that they’ll eventually phase out of the service just as they always would. Largely, however, the usefulness of the service for PS4 players will soon hit the deck.

It’s a tough break for PS4 players, but it’s been some time coming. The PS5 has been out since late 2020, giving it almost five years on the market for it to make it into players’ hands, and it looks like for many, Sony hasn’t done enough to convince them to upgrade. For players on PS5, little will have changed other than less chances to play games that launched between 2013 and 2020, but with so much focus on the increased power of the PS5 and its games, it won’t make much of a dent for them. Regardless, it’s the end of an era, and this appears to be the first step in the long PS4 sunsetting process. Enjoy it while you have it.