The best games for Ubuntu right now are Counter-Strike 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Balatro and EA Sports FC 26.
Between them you get a free tactical shooter, a hundred hour role-playing game, a card game that runs on almost any old laptop, and a full season of football. There is something on this list for most kinds of player.
We picked these on what each game does best: competitive depth, story, co-op, or simply being easy to run. Every game here works on Ubuntu 26.04, either as a Linux version, through Steam, or by streaming, and each card tells you which.
Think we missed one? Let us know in the comments, or get in touch if you have questions.
Best Shooters and Battle Royale Games
Valve’s tactical shooter rebuilt on the Source 2 engine, with volumetric smoke you can shoot holes through and sub-tick servers that register your shot the instant you fire it.
- Ranked Premier plus casual playlists
- Skins, cases and a huge community map scene
- Sub-tick movement and shooting
Twenty five years of refinement in one free download. Every round is the same simple problem solved a hundred different ways, and no shooter has ever matched it for tension.
Four player co-op against bug swarms and robot armies, where you call in your own orbital strikes and friendly fire never switches off.
- Galactic war that all players push together
- Stratagems you input by button combo
- Crossplay with PlayStation and Windows
The best comedy in games is unintentional. You will call an airstrike on your own squad within an hour, and everyone will be laughing.
Five versus five hero shooter with a huge cast of tanks, damage and support characters, and some of the sharpest ability design in any team game.
- Over 40 heroes, all free
- Ranked, quick play and arcade modes
- New heroes and maps each season
Blizzard polish at its best. Every hero feels distinct to play and to fight against, and no other shooter reads quite like it in a teamfight.
Six versus six hero shooter with a growing Marvel roster, destructible maps and team-up moves that only trigger when the right characters play together.
- Over 40 playable Marvel characters
- Destructible environments
- New heroes and maps every season
The team-up system is the clever part. Pairing the right heroes unlocks abilities neither has alone, so squad composition actually matters.
Battle royale with building, plus Zero Build if you would rather just shoot, and whole separate LEGO, racing and rhythm modes inside the same free download.
- Battle royale and Zero Build modes
- LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Festival
- Crossplay with console and mobile
Nothing else changes this fast. The map, the weapons and the whole premise get torn up every few months, which is exactly why people never leave.
Fast, twitchy multiplayer with the shortest time to kill in the genre, a full campaign, and free to play Warzone battle royale alongside it.
- Ranked and casual multiplayer playlists
- Warzone battle royale is free to play
- Deep weapon and loadout customisation
Whatever you think of the annual release cycle, the moment to moment gunfeel is still the sharpest in the business.
Sci-fi looter shooter with the best feeling guns in any game, six player raids that take a weekend to solve, and years of free story to work through.
- Huge free-to-play base game
- Six player raids and dungeons
- Thousands of weapons and perk rolls
Bungie has been perfecting how a gun feels since Halo, and it shows. Even after hundreds of hours the shooting never stops being satisfying.
Best Open World and RPG Games
Turn based Dungeons and Dragons on a scale nobody has attempted before. Roughly 150 hours, and almost every problem has a solution the writers actually accounted for.
- Three full acts and dozens of endings
- Drop-in co-op for up to four players
- Full voice acting and cinematic dialogue
You can talk your way past a boss, shove him off a cliff, or turn into a bear and maul him. All three were planned for. That is why it won everything.
FromSoftware’s open world, where an ordinary ride across a field ends with a golden knight on horseback deleting you in two hits. Includes the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.
- Huge open world with hidden underground regions
- Summon help or invade other players
- Dozens of build paths and weapon arts
No game rewards curiosity like this one. Every cave, ruin and suspicious cliff edge has something behind it, and none of it is marked on a map.
First person open world RPG in Night City, with a full skill and cyberware system and the Phantom Liberty spy thriller expansion built on top.
- Base game plus Phantom Liberty
- Deep cyberware and build system
- Ray tracing on supported cards
Night City is the most convincing city in games. Not the biggest, the most convincing. It feels lived in at street level in a way open worlds rarely manage.
Open world fantasy RPG with two expansions the size of most full games, and side quests written better than most main stories.
- Base game plus Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine
- Around 150 hours of content
- Regularly discounted to a few dollars
The Bloody Baron questline alone is worth the price. It starts as a missing person job and turns into the best writing in the medium.
An outlaw western set in 1899, following a gang running out of country to hide in. The most detailed world Rockstar has ever built.
- Enormous story mode with side missions
- Hunting, fishing, camp management
- Vulkan graphics mode included
The ending is the best in any Rockstar game. Everything before it is a slow, deliberate build that earns exactly that.
Three criminals, one city, and a story you switch between at will. The heist missions are still the high point of the series.
- Full campaign with three playable leads
- Elaborate multi-stage heists
- Enormous open Los Santos
Switching characters mid-heist was a genuinely new idea and nobody has done it better since. The campaign holds up completely.
Heavy third person action against Tyranid swarms, with chainswords, bolters and hundreds of enemies on screen at once.
- Campaign plus PvE Operations mode
- Three player co-op throughout
- Six classes with separate progression
The weight is what sells it. You are a walking tank, and the animations make every execution land like it costs something.
Dark fantasy action role-playing across an open Sanctuary. Kill things, collect better things to kill things with, repeat until it is somehow four in the morning.
- Full campaign plus endless endgame
- Seasonal characters and new mechanics
- Couch and online co-op
The loot loop is the most refined in the genre. Seasons keep giving you a reason to start again from nothing, which is the whole appeal.
Best Indie Games
You play Hornet this time, faster and more aggressive than the original, climbing through a kingdom that wants you dead in 150-plus rooms of hand-drawn bugs.
- Over 150 new enemies and dozens of bosses
- Faster, more acrobatic combat
- Full controller support
Six years of waiting and it was worth it. Hornet moves so much better than the Knight that going back is genuinely hard.
A poker roguelike where you build a deck of Jokers that break the rules of poker entirely, chasing score multipliers into numbers that stop meaning anything.
- Over 150 Jokers that combo in absurd ways
- A run takes 30 to 45 minutes
- Endless mode once you beat it
You do not need to know poker. You need to notice that these three Jokers multiply each other, and then you are gone for four hours.
Inherit a run-down farm and do whatever you like with it: crops, animals, mining, fishing, monster fighting, or marrying someone in town and ignoring the farm entirely.
- Four player co-op on one farm
- Marriage, festivals and town storylines
- Enormous free mod scene
One developer made this alone over four years and still ships free content a decade later. There is no other game with that story.
Dig, fight, build. A 2D sandbox with hundreds of bosses, thousands of items and a progression curve that keeps unfolding for a hundred hours.
- Over 5,000 items to find and craft
- Dozens of bosses across the progression
- Eight player servers
It looks like a small pixel game and it is the size of most open worlds. Grab three friends and it is the best value on this page.
You move, it shoots. Pick up weapons, watch them evolve, and end the run standing in the middle of ten thousand enemies deleting the screen.
- Runs last 15 to 30 minutes
- Dozens of characters and weapon evolutions
- Several large expansions
It costs about the same as a coffee and invented an entire genre. The moment your build comes together is one of the best feelings in games.
Best Strategy and Simulation Games
Crash on an alien planet and build a factory that builds a rocket. Conveyor belts, trains, and an ever-growing machine you can never quite stop improving.
- Full campaign plus freeplay
- Multiplayer with a dedicated server
- Space Age expansion
The factory must grow. You will say you are stopping at midnight and you will still be balancing a train network at three.
Five versus five, over 120 heroes, and every single one free from the start. The deepest competitive game on this list by a distance.
- All 120-plus heroes unlocked immediately
- Ranked matchmaking and custom games
- The International, the biggest prize pool in esports
Nothing is locked behind money, which is rarer than it should be. The learning curve is brutal and the payoff is a game you can play for a decade.
Best Sports and Racing Games
The World’s Game update added a 48 team international tournament with 53 licensed national teams, alongside the usual Ultimate Team, Career Mode and Clubs.
- 48 team international tournament, 41 of them 2026 qualifiers
- New stadiums including Gillette Stadium and BMO Field
- Ultimate Team, Career Mode and Pro Clubs
The World’s Game mode is the closest thing to a World Cup on PC this year. EA lost the FIFA licence in 2022, so there is no official trophy or branding, and the tournament is offline only, but the football itself is all there.
Konami’s free football game, built around tight dribbling and a slower build-up than its rival, with a serious competitive scene behind it.
- Completely free, no annual purchase
- Licensed clubs including Barcelona and Bayern
- Crossplay between PC and mobile
If you refuse to buy a football game every single year, this is the answer, and the ball physics are arguably better.
Football played with rocket powered cars. Easy to understand in ten seconds and genuinely impossible to master.
- Completely free with cross platform play
- Ranked ladder and casual playlists
- Matches last five minutes
The perfect five minute game. Simple enough that anyone can join in, deep enough that people have played it for a decade.
An open world racing festival with hundreds of licensed cars, a full day and night cycle, and roads good enough that you will drive them for no reason.
- Hundreds of licensed real cars
- Open world free roam plus events
- Online multiplayer and co-op convoys
The best looking racing game there is, and the most relaxed. There is no fail state to free roam, just you and a very fast car and a very good road.
All 26 Games Compared
Open the full comparison table
| # | Game | How it runs | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Counter-Strike 2 | Native Linux | Free to play |
| 2 | Helldivers 2 | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 3 | Overwatch 2 | Cloud game | Free to play |
| 4 | Marvel Rivals | Cloud game | Free to play |
| 5 | Fortnite | Cloud game | Free to play |
| 6 | Call of Duty | Cloud game | Free and paid |
| 7 | Destiny 2 | Cloud game | Free to play |
| 8 | Baldur’s Gate 3 | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 9 | Elden Ring | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 10 | Cyberpunk 2077 | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 11 | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 12 | Red Dead Redemption 2 | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 13 | Grand Theft Auto V | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 14 | Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 15 | Diablo IV | Cloud game | Paid |
| 16 | Hollow Knight: Silksong | Runs via Proton | Paid |
| 17 | Balatro | Native Linux | Paid |
| 18 | Stardew Valley | Native Linux | Paid |
| 19 | Terraria | Native Linux | Paid |
| 20 | Vampire Survivors | Native Linux | Paid |
| 21 | Factorio | Native Linux | Paid |
| 22 | Dota 2 | Native Linux | Free to play |
| 23 | EA Sports FC 26 | Cloud game | Paid |
| 24 | eFootball | Cloud game | Free to play |
| 25 | Rocket League | Cloud game | Free to play |
| 26 | Forza Horizon 6 | Cloud game | Paid |
Getting Set Up
Most of these games run through Steam, so that is all you need. Install it, open Settings, go to Compatibility and switch on Enable Steam Play for all other titles. That turns on Proton, which is free software from Valve that translates a Windows game into something Linux understands while you play. You do it once and never think about it again. Our Steam install guide covers it step by step.
If your games are on Epic, GOG or Amazon instead
Install Heroic or Lutris. They do for those stores what Steam does for its own, letting you install and launch the games without touching a terminal. Skip this if everything you play is on Steam.
Native Linux. Built for Linux. Install it and play.
Runs via Proton. A Windows game that works on Ubuntu through Steam. Switch Proton on once in Steam settings and forget about it.
Cloud game. Anti-cheat stops it installing on Linux, so you play it in your browser instead. Same account, same progress.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best game for Ubuntu?
Counter-Strike 2. It is free, it is built for Linux, and it needs no setup at all. For single player, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring are the strongest picks on this list.
What is Proton, in plain terms?
Free software made by Valve that sits between a Windows game and Linux and translates one to the other while you play. You switch it on once in Steam settings and never think about it again.
Does Fortnite work on Ubuntu?
Yes, but not by installing it. Epic has never switched on the Linux support that already exists in its anti-cheat. Streaming it works properly, with no ban risk, because the game really is running on Windows.
Will I get banned for playing on Linux?
Not for games that support Linux. You can be banned for forcing a game that has blocked it, because the anti-cheat reads that as tampering. Destiny 2 is the clearest example, so play that one through the cloud instead.
Is Proton slower than a native Linux game?
Usually not, and sometimes faster. Proton is heavily optimised, while some older native ports have been abandoned by their developers. Do not pick a game purely because it says native.
Do I need a different distro for gaming?
No. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ships current graphics drivers and a recent kernel, which is what matters. If you are curious anyway, see our guide to the best Linux distros for gaming.
AMD or NVIDIA for gaming on Ubuntu?
AMD is smoother for most people because the drivers are already part of Ubuntu and there is nothing to install. NVIDIA works well too and is better for ray tracing, but you install a separate driver and occasionally deal with it after a system update.
More Ubuntu gaming guides: Top Action Games for Ubuntu · Best Linux Distros for Gaming · How to Install Steam on Ubuntu
