Madden is heading for the exit. Persona 5 Tactica too. And the Premium tier is losing two separate Toy Story titles at once, something that hardly ever happens within a single month.
Sony has yet to breathe a word about what joins PlayStation Plus in September 2026. What’s on the way out, however, is already fairly clear.
August set a bar September has to clear
An enormous argument is raging around PlayStation right now over whether players are entitled to access physical media, and it’s soaking up nearly all the oxygen. Underneath it, the machinery keeps turning. Sony pushes out its monthly PS Plus updates either way.
By most measures, August was the strongest month the service has managed in a long while. Helldivers 2 and Dying Light 2 both returned to the catalog for subscribers, the sort of one-two that stops people threatening to cancel for a few weeks.
September begins from a very different position. So far, the only column we can fill in is the subtraction one.
Why these specific games are walking
If you’ve kept half an eye on the release calendar, most of these removals were entirely predictable.
EA Sports Madden NFL 26 is almost certainly being cleared out to make room for the new game, which has just landed in players’ hands. There’s no better way to sell a football game than to quietly pull last year’s football game from the subscription your customers already pay for.
Disney has confirmed a definitive collection of classic Toy Story games due out in October 2026. That’s what explains the unusual double departure from the Premium tier this time around. Two exits from one tier in a single month is odd. A repackaged collection arriving a few weeks later accounts for it.
Persona 5 Tactica is the most straightforward case of the bunch. It has just completed a full year on PS Plus, and the removal this month is likely down to avoiding any licensing issues.
The Shadowrun situation nobody has confirmed
This is the part worth acting on. The Shadowrun trilogy, made up of Returns, Dragonfall – Director’s Cut and Hong Kong, has been on the Extra and Premium tiers for some time.
Nothing official has been said about its removal. All three, though, are currently parked in the “Last chance to play” section, which is Sony’s version of a polite cough.
If they’ve been sitting on your list, err on the side of caution and work through them now. Dragonfall by itself is a long weekend.
The additions are the real question
What’s planned to arrive on PlayStation Plus in September is still unknown. Sony will announce it when Sony announces it.
The mood is the complication. Scroll the replies beneath the company’s posts at the moment and the vitriol is thick enough that it’s difficult to name any single game that could win players around. Whatever lands next month is walking into an audience already annoyed about something else entirely.
Which is a rough spot for a service that just gave people Helldivers 2 and got a comment section full of people talking about disc drives.