Gears of War: E-Day Open Beta Opens to Everyone Today on Xbox Series X|S and PC

The Gears of War: E-Day open beta stops being an early-access perk today. The second and final beta weekend opens to every player at 12 p.m. PT / 3 p.m. ET on 13 August and runs until 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET on 17 August, with no pre-order and no invite needed. It is available on Xbox Series X and Series S and on PC through the Xbox app and Steam.

Which platforms get the Gears of War: E-Day open beta

Three places: Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC, where you can grab it from either the Xbox app or Steam. There is no PlayStation 5 version and no Nintendo Switch 2 version of the beta, and none has been announced for the finished game either.

The developer's FAQ lists an Xbox Game Pass Essentials membership as the requirement for online multiplayer on console, in line with how paid online works on Xbox generally. PC players do not need a subscription for the beta. Steam players can play without linking a Microsoft account, though you will need that link to invite or accept invites from friends on other platforms.

One hardware note that is easy to miss and will ruin your weekend if you do: the studio says an SSD is mandatory. Running the build from a mechanical hard drive is flagged as causing severe loading problems, missing assets, stuttering and crashes.

What changed since the first beta weekend

The early-access weekend, which ran from 6 to 10 August for people who had pre-ordered or subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, only offered the co-operative side. This weekend adds the competitive side.

• Horde Siege — the 12-player PvE mode, played on the Golden Quarter map, built around defending R.I.G. objectives, hunting supply caches, clearing secondary objectives and surviving invasion events before a Raven extraction.
• Versus — the returning 4v4 competitive mode, newly added for this weekend, with two modes across two maps: Market and Outpost.
• Four classes, ten levels of progression, two invasion bosses, five medals, and the full weapon set.

If you played the first weekend, your beta progress carries across to this one. It does not carry into the finished game — class progression, player level and medal progress all reset at launch. The cosmetic rewards are the exception: skins, banners and emblems earned in the beta are permanent and follow you into the full release.

How this fits the run-up to launch

Gears of War: E-Day releases on 6 October 2026, which puts this beta roughly seven weeks out. That is late enough that the build is a fair indication of feel and early enough that server behaviour and matchmaking are still being tuned, and the studio has been explicit that this is a work-in-progress build with known stability issues and accessibility work still unfinished.

Practically, that means treat crashes and geometry glitches as data rather than as a verdict. It also means the two things genuinely worth judging this weekend are the ones a patch is least likely to overhaul in seven weeks: how the 4v4 Versus gunplay reads, and whether Horde Siege's objective loop holds up over a full run.

The October date lands in an already dense autumn — our rundown of the most anticipated games of 2026 and their confirmed dates has the full calendar, and E-Day arrives before the November heavyweights rather than against them.

Worth knowing before you download

Beta weekends are the cheapest way to find out whether a shooter suits you, and this one costs nothing on any of the three platforms. If you are on PC and undecided between the Xbox app and Steam versions, the content is identical; the difference is which library and friends list you would rather it live in.

If Versus is the part you care about, note that it is only playable during this window — the mode was not in the first weekend, and there is no indication it returns before the 6 October release. Four days is the whole opportunity.

Not on Xbox or PC? Plenty of the same appeal is available elsewhere this month: Duskfade launched today across PS5, Xbox, Switch 2 and PC, the Helldivers 2 Warhammer 40,000 Warbond landed this week for co-op squads, and if you would rather play on a phone, our list of Android games with full gamepad support covers what actually works with an Xbox controller you already own.