26Fishin' Frenzy
9Gates of Olympus
9Sweet Bonanza
6Sugar Rush
284Megaways
249Jackpot
27Bell Link
77Dice
433Animal
377Asian
270Egyptian
320Horror
206Christmas
160Adventure
154Fishing
167Gems & Diamonds
127Dragon
125Irish
118Gods & Mythology
215Magic
93Joker
76Wild West
130Pirate
54Book of
64Aztec
48Vegas
38Buffalo
24Viking
38Space
Pragmatic Play POP is the studio’s newest sub-brand, and it is doing something more interesting than another sequel: it takes the games with the biggest names in the catalogue and rebuilds them on a narrower grid with a prize that sits outside the bonus round entirely. Two of them are already playable as free demos on this site, a third is dated for November, and a fourth is on the way. Here is what the format actually changes.
What POP is, and where it came from
POP launched on 31 July 2026 as a casual sub-brand, built out of a studio Pragmatic Play had already acquired and rebranded. The pitch is narrow and fairly honest: streamlined reels, shorter sessions, fewer things to learn. Where the main Pragmatic catalogue has spent five years adding ways counts, multiplier grids and feature buys, POP strips the board back.
The first release, Gates of Olympus POP, arrived on 31 August 2026 and took the most recognisable game the studio has. That is the part worth paying attention to. Studios usually test a new format on a new IP, because a flop costs nothing. Leading with Zeus says the format is meant to be the main line, not an experiment parked on the side.
The grid is the headline change
POP games are built portrait, three columns wide. Gates of Olympus POP runs a 3×5 grid — three reels across, five symbols deep — against the six-reel board the original uses. That is not a cosmetic change. A narrower grid means fewer symbol positions, which means fewer ways for a cluster to form, which changes the shape of the maths underneath whether or not the studio publishes a different return.
It is also, obviously, a phone decision. A portrait board fills a phone screen without the dead space a six-reel grid leaves at the top and bottom, and it does not need the player to turn the device. Most slot play has been on phones for years; this is the first time one of the big studios has rebuilt its flagship around that instead of scaling it down.
The instant prize is the part people get wrong
The POP prize is separate from the free spins, and that distinction matters because it is easy to misread the headline number. On Gates of Olympus POP the bonus works the familiar way: three or more scatters award fifteen free spins, and two more landing during the round add five more. During the spins, win multipliers accumulate into a running total applied at the end of each tumbling sequence.
The POP prize sits on top. If the bonus triggers alongside one, two or three POP symbols, the game awards an extra 50×, 500× or 25,000× the bet respectively. So the 25,000× figure in every headline is not a max win you build towards across a bonus round — it is a single outcome that requires the bonus and three POP symbols to arrive together.
The number in the marketing is the ceiling of one specific event, not the ceiling of the game. Those are very different things, and only one of them is likely.
One published review describes the trigger differently, saying combinations of three scatter or POP symbols start the free spins. The majority reading across the coverage is the one above — scatters trigger, POP symbols pay — but the paytable inside the game is the only thing that settles it, and it is one tap away in the demo.
What is playable right now
Both released POP titles are in our library as free demos, on play credits, with no account and no deposit:
- Gates of Olympus POP — released 31 August 2026, and the more played of the two in our library this week. It sits on our Gates of Olympus collection alongside all nine versions of the game, which makes the format change easy to feel rather than read about.
- Sweet Bonanza POP — dated 20 October 2026, reported with instant prizes up to 25,000×. It is on the Sweet Bonanza collection with the rest of that line.
- Zeus vs Hades POP — dated 17 November 2026, reported with expanding wilds carrying multipliers up to 100×. It is in our catalogue but has no demo build we can serve yet.
- Starlight Princess POP — announced for December, reported with multipliers up to 1,000×. No date we can verify and no demo yet.
The pattern in that list is the story: Pragmatic is not building POP versions of small games. It is building them of Gates of Olympus, Sweet Bonanza, Zeus vs Hades and Starlight Princess — four of the most searched slot names in Europe. Every one of them already has a 1000 or 2500 multiway rework too, which means the same title now exists in three materially different builds.
Is a POP version worth playing if you like the original?
Play both back to back and the honest answer is that they are different games wearing the same art. The original Gates of Olympus is a long game: you are waiting for a tumbling sequence to connect with a multiplier orb, and the sessions that pay are the ones that run. The POP build is shorter and more binary, because the prize that defines its ceiling either lands with the bonus or it does not.
That suits some players exactly and will bore others. It is the clearest argument we know of for trying a demo before depositing anywhere: the name on the box is identical, the symbols are identical, and the thing you are actually buying is not.
What we will not do is tell you which has better odds. Pragmatic has not published a return figure for every POP build in the feed we use, and where a studio has not stated a number we leave the field blank rather than estimating one. You can see exactly which games have a published RTP on each collection page — a surprising number do not.
What it signals for the rest of 2026
Three things are worth watching. First, whether POP stays a sub-brand or becomes the default shape for new Pragmatic releases, which the Q4 schedule starts to answer. Second, whether rival studios follow — a portrait, three-column, instant-prize format is cheap to copy and the phone argument applies to everyone. Third, whether the 25,000× number holds, because once every release in a range claims the same ceiling the figure stops carrying information.
In the meantime, the useful thing is that you can check all of this yourself for nothing. Every POP game with a demo build is in our Pragmatic Play demo library, and the two reworked flagships sit beside every other version of themselves on their series pages. Open the paytable, count the reels, and see whether the format is for you before anyone asks you for a deposit.
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