Nintendo Switch 2 First-Party Games: Every Exclusive, Switch 2 Edition and Upcoming Release

Nintendo Switch 2 already has much more than Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza carrying its first-party lineup.

Nintendo has launched brand-new games for Mario, Kirby, Pokémon, Splatoon, Yoshi, Zelda and Star Fox, while also rebuilding some of the original Switch’s biggest releases as enhanced Nintendo Switch 2 Editions.

This living guide tracks Nintendo’s major Switch 2 exclusives, upgraded Switch 2 Editions and upcoming first-party releases, so you can quickly see what is available now and what is still on the way.

Table of Contents

1. What counts as a Switch 2 first-party game?
2. Released Switch 2 exclusives
3. Released Nintendo Switch 2 Editions
4. Upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games
5. Are Switch 2 Editions worth it?
6. Nintendo games on G2A.COM
7. Nintendo Switch 2 first-party FAQ

Mario Kart World was Nintendo’s big launch statement. Instead of simply making Mario Kart 8 bigger again, Nintendo connected courses inside a much larger world that players can drive through freely.

Grand Prix returns, but the new Knockout Tour eliminates racers at checkpoints across extended point-to-point routes. Free Roam goes in the opposite direction, letting players leave the race behind entirely and explore at their own pace.

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Donkey Kong Bananza turns destruction into exploration. DK can smash through walls, punch tunnels through the terrain, rip chunks of the environment out of the ground and use Pauline’s voice to unlock powerful Bananza transformations.

The result is not simply another traditional 3D platformer. The terrain itself becomes part of the moveset, which makes exploring underground layers feel much less rigid than moving between carefully defined paths.

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Kirby Air Riders revives the GameCube cult favorite with fast races, arena battles and deliberately simple controls. Machines accelerate automatically, leaving the player to concentrate on steering, Boost Charge, positioning and attacks.

The real chaos comes from combining different riders and machines, especially in larger competitive modes where racing and combat start bleeding into each other.

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Mario Tennis returned in 2026 with a much larger character roster and a stronger emphasis on special abilities. Fever mechanics can dramatically change the flow of rallies, while different rackets and characters give competitive matches more variety.

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Pokémon Pokopia takes the series away from gyms and competitive battling and into cozy life-sim territory. You play as a Ditto transformed into a human-like shape, restoring a dried-out world by crafting, building and befriending Pokémon.

The slower pace makes it one of the most unusual Pokémon spin-offs Nintendo has published in years.

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Yoshi’s Switch 2 adventure revolves around exploring the pages of a mysterious talking book and discovering unusual creatures hidden inside. Progress comes from observation and discovery as much as traditional platforming.

It is a gentler release than Nintendo’s big action games, but that variety is part of what keeps the first-party calendar from becoming one long sequence of open worlds and boss fights.

Star Fox finally returned with a new Switch 2 entry in June 2026. The series once again focuses on fast spacecraft combat, branching missions and the Arwing rather than trying to reinvent itself as something completely unrelated to its arcade-shooter roots.

Splatoon Raiders takes Nintendo’s ink-shooting series into a more adventure-focused structure. After crash landing on the Spirhalite Islands, the Mechanic teams up with Deep Cut to search for treasure, salvage equipment and fight waves of Salmonids.

The basic loop is simple: raid islands, collect loot, upgrade your gear and head back out. It is mainly built around solo progression, but additional players can join to help with stages.

SWITCH 2 EDITIONS

Both open-world Zelda games received improved frame rates and resolution, faster loading and HDR support. Nintendo also added integration with the ZELDA NOTES service through the Nintendo Switch App.

These upgrades matter because both games were designed around huge environments where smoother performance and shorter transitions are noticeable constantly, rather than only during a handful of demanding scenes.

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SWITCH 2 EDITION

This is the kind of Switch 2 Edition that goes beyond a performance patch. The upgrade improves the visuals and frame rate but also adds Star-Crossed World, a completely new story built around transformed stages and additional challenges.

SWITCH 2 EDITION

Metroid Prime 4 is one of the clearest showcases for the hardware differences between Switch and Switch 2. The newer edition supports Joy-Con 2 mouse aiming and offers multiple graphics modes, including higher-resolution output and a high-frame-rate performance option.

For a first-person game built around aiming, scanning and environmental exploration, mouse controls are more than a novelty.

SWITCH 2 EDITION

Wonder’s upgrade is another content-heavy edition. Bellabel Park adds minigames, challenges, collectibles and new boss battles, while Rosalina joins the playable roster.

GameShare and additional multiplayer features also make this upgrade more substantial than simply raising the resolution.

SWITCH 2 EDITIONS

Nintendo and Monolith Soft are steadily rebuilding the Xenoblade catalog for Switch 2. Xenoblade Chronicles X, the original Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are already upgraded, with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 following in December.

The improvements are not purely technical. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 adds a new rare Blade, an action-oriented mercenary battle mode and additional equipment designs, while Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will add a new Hero and defensive battle mode.

The next Fire Emblem follows four heroes whose stories intersect across different points in time. Players travel through the past and present gathering allies for a confrontation with the demon god Balor.

The core remains strategic turn-based combat, but the time-spanning structure gives Intelligent Systems a new way to approach the series’ familiar combination of warfare, character relationships and long-term consequences.

Nintendo is returning to Wuhu Island with 12 motion-controlled sports. Tennis, bowling, golf, basketball and volleyball sit beside activities such as boxing, archery, skateboarding, Power Cruising and Prop Plane.

Joy-Con 2 does more than reproduce Wii-era motion controls. Skateboarding can use mouse functionality, while different activities turn the controllers into rackets, paddles and other sports equipment.

Noah and Mio’s adventure is getting 4K support in TV mode, full HD handheld output and 60fps performance. Nintendo is also adding a new Hero, a new Hero Quest, defensive battles and fully voiced event scenes.

Once it launches, most of Monolith Soft’s modern Xenoblade catalog will have dedicated Switch 2 versions.

Nintendo is not simply adding another Nintendo 64 ROM to Nintendo Classics. Ocarina of Time is being described as reborn for a new generation exclusively on Switch 2.

That makes it one of the most interesting games on Nintendo’s schedule because the company has not yet revealed every detail about how extensive that rebuilding process will be.

Pokémon’s next paired generation is being built specifically for Switch 2. Winds and Waves take place across an open world of windswept islands and a large ocean, with Pokémon forming distinct ecosystems across the region.

The first partner choices are Browt, Pombon and Gecqua, while the player’s outfit differs depending on the version. More importantly, these are not cross-generation Switch games. Game Freak is targeting Switch 2 from the beginning.

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