Borderlands 4 turned one year old this week, and 2K marked it by handing the whole game out for free. Not a demo, not the first two hours. The full base game, until Monday.
It is not the only one either. F1 25 is running a free weekend on Steam at the same time, Xbox has six games open under Free Play Days, and Epic is giving two away to keep. Here is the whole list with the deadlines, because the deadline is the only part that actually matters.
Borderlands 4 is free until Monday evening
The Free Play Weekend started on 10 September and ends on 14 September at 10:00 in the morning Pacific time, which is 17:00 UTC on Monday. From Friday evening in Europe that leaves you roughly two and a half days.
You get the base game in full, including the post-launch things 2K has added for free since, Circle of Slaughter among them. Every bandit, every monster, every wild boss fight, in 2K's own words.
One catch worth knowing before you organise an evening around it. If you join friends who own a paid Vault Hunter, they can still play as that character, but your party gets limited to the missions included in the free base game. So the DLC people are not locked out, your session just stays inside the free content.
What happens when the weekend ends
Your save is not thrown away. Buy any edition afterwards on the same platform and your progress, loot and achievements are all still there. The words "same platform" are doing the work in that sentence: free hours on Steam do not convert into anything on a console.
- The anniversary sale is 50 percent off. Borderlands 4 is 34.99 dollars instead of 69.99, and the Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions are cut by the same amount. Steam offers run until 24 September.
- Cross-play is on. Whichever platform your friends are on, you can all play together.
- Cross-save works during the free weekend too. It needs a SHiFT account, which is free, and it only moves saves between platforms where you own the game.
- There are bundles if you have never touched the series. The Mayhem Bundle is Borderlands 1, 2, 3 and 4 plus the first story pack, and Steam's Complete Your Collection pricing drops the price of anything you already own.
Good timing on 2K's part, as it happens. Patch 1.10 landed the same day the free weekend opened, with a raised level cap, a second story pack and a new Vault Hunter called Loveless the Hacker. She is paid DLC, so she is not part of this, but the game you are trying is the patched one rather than the one people argued about a year ago.
F1 25 is the other free weekend on Steam
This one is easy to miss because it has no announcement attached to it, just a banner on the Steam front page and a line on the store page: play for free until 14 September at 10:00. Same deadline as Borderlands 4.
Codemasters put it out in May 2025, and the September update has since added the 2026 Formula 2 season, a sports update that brings eight teams closer to their real cars, and a run of special liveries. The game itself is 30 percent off while the free weekend runs, 34.99 dollars instead of 49.99.
If you have been waiting for a reason to find out whether a racing sim clicks for you, a free weekend is a better test than any review, mine included.
Six on Xbox, and only two of them need nothing
Xbox Free Play Days runs from 10 to 13 September, so it closes a day earlier than the Steam side. Six games, and the split between them matters.
Four of them need a Game Pass membership at Ultimate, Premium or Essential level: Borderlands 4, F1 25 in its 2026 Season Edition, Surviving Mars: Relaunched and CarX Drift Racing Online. Two are open to every Xbox owner with no subscription at all. EA Sports Madden NFL 27 is the real one of those. Dustborn is also open to everybody but only as a two hour trial, which is not enough to finish its road trip and is honestly more of a demo with a discount attached.
Two more worth grabbing while you are at it, on a different store entirely. Epic is giving away Luftrausers and Astral Ascent until 17 September, and those are yours permanently rather than for a weekend. Astral Ascent normally costs 24.99 dollars, which makes it the best value on this whole page.
One thing I could not confirm: 2K's announcement gives free access times for Steam only, and Xbox has its own window through Free Play Days. If there is a PlayStation window this weekend, nothing official says so, and I am not going to invent one.
Sources
The Borderlands 4 Free Play Weekend details come from 2K's own announcement posted to the game's Steam news feed on 10 September 2026: the start on 10 September and end on 14 September at 10:00 Pacific time, the full base game including free post-launch additions such as Circle of Slaughter, the limit that a party joining a DLC Vault Hunter owner stays inside free base game missions, progress and loot carrying over on purchase on the same platform, cross-platform saves through a free SHiFT account, full cross-play, the 50 percent anniversary discounts on the standard, Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions with Steam offers ending 24 September at 10:00 Pacific time, and the Mayhem and Borderlands squared bundles with Complete Your Collection pricing. The current prices of 34.99 dollars against 69.99 for Borderlands 4 and 34.99 against 49.99 for F1 25, the release dates of 11 September 2025 and 30 May 2025, and the developers and publishers were read from the Steam store API on 11 September 2026. The free access line "Play for free until 14 Sep" was read from both games' Steam store pages the same day, and the Free Weekend banner for F1 25 from the Steam front page. The F1 25 September update contents come from the patch v1.25 notes on its Steam news feed. The Xbox Free Play Days lineup, the split between titles needing a Game Pass Ultimate, Premium or Essential membership and titles open to all Xbox owners, the two hour limit on Dustborn and the 10 to 13 September dates come from the Xbox Wire post of 10 September 2026. The Epic Games Store giveaways of Luftrausers and Astral Ascent and their end date of 17 September were read from the store's own promotions feed. The note that no PlayStation window is documented is ours, as is everything resembling an opinion.
