Xbox services hit by global outage, stopping all game access

A major global outage has crippled Xbox online services, leaving users worldwide unable to sign into accounts, access digital libraries, or launch games, including those on physical discs. The disruption, which began on the evening of Sunday, July 26, 2026, and persisted into Monday, has affected multiple generations of consoles from the Xbox 360 to the latest Series X and S models.

Microsoft confirmed the widespread issues on its official Xbox status page, listing four core services under a "major outage": accounts and profiles, the store and subscriptions, games and gaming, and apps. The company stated that users may be unable to sign in, may be disconnected while signed in, and that features requiring sign-in-including most games, apps, and social activity-are unavailable. Crucially, the outage also prevents the launch of many physical disc-based games that require online authentication.

In a series of updates on social media platform X, Xbox Support acknowledged the problem, stating that engineers are actively working to mitigate the issue. The team later thanked players for their patience as work continued on a resolution, noting the outage had been ongoing for many hours....