Sony has confirmed the PlayStation Plus Essential free games for June 2026 – subscribers can claim Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide starting June 2 through July 6, 2026. The standout is Grounded, which began life as an Xbox and PC exclusive before expanding to PlayStation – its presence here is one of the more interesting cross-platform pivots of the generation, and it lands on PS Plus Essential with a full content-complete edition in tow.
Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition is Obsidian Entertainment‘s survival-crafting game where you’re shrunk to ant-size and left to fend for yourself in a suburban backyard – a premise that sounds absurd until you’re thirty hours deep and terrified of spiders. The Fully Yoked Edition bundles every post-launch update and quality-of-life improvement into one package, and it supports solo play or up to three friends online. Available on both PS5 and PS4, it’s the easiest claim of the month.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a platform fighter in the mould of Super Smash Bros., featuring SpongeBob SquarePants, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jimmy Neutron, and a roster full of cartoon icons swinging at each other. It’s a step up from the first game in terms of mechanics and polish, and it fills the fighting-game slot with enough casual-couch appeal to justify a claim. Also available on PS5 and PS4.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide rounds out the month with grimdark co-op chaos set in the infested city of Tertium, built by the studio behind the Vermintide games. It’s designed around four-player co-op and leans hard into class-based builds and melee combat that feels genuinely weighty. Fair warning: this one is PS5-only, so PS4 players will need to sit it out.
- Grounded: Fully Yoked Edition (PS5, PS4)
- Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 (PS5, PS4)
- Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (PS5)
Worth noting before you move on: the May 2026 PS Plus Essential games are still claimable until June 2, so if you haven’t added them to your library yet, do it before the rotation flips. No bonus DLC or Icons Packs have been announced alongside the June lineup at time of writing.
Here’s the real read: this is a legitimately strong month for Essential subscribers, and the genre spread – survival-crafting, platform fighter, co-op shooter – covers more ground than most months manage. The inclusion of Grounded is the headline, and it’s hard to argue with: it’s a critically well-regarded, content-complete game that previously lived behind platform walls. As reported by Push Square, community reaction has broadly framed this as a good month, with Grounded and Darktide doing the heavy lifting for co-op players in particular.
That said, the PS5-only restriction on Darktide is worth clocking – it’s part of a creeping pattern, and if you’ve been watching Sony’s recent PS Plus price changes, the value calculus on the Essential tier is something subscribers are paying closer attention to right now. June earns its keep. Whether that holds through the summer is the question.
Which of the three are you claiming first – or does Grounded finally make the backyard survival loop click for you? Sound off in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more PlayStation Plus coverage.
