Can You Play PS2 Games on PS5?

Can you play PS2 games on PS5? The short answer is yes — but only a small, hand-picked catalogue of downloadable classics. The PlayStation 5 has no native PS2 disc support at all: put a PS2 disc in and the console simply can't read it. What you can do is buy or subscribe to officially emulated "PS2 Classics" — around fifty titles so far, out of a library of nearly 4,000. Here's exactly what works, what doesn't, and what it costs.

The Short Answer

How PS2 Games Work on PS5

Every playable PS2 game on PS5 runs inside Sony's emulation wrapper — a virtual PS2 packaged as a native PS5/PS4 app. The line began as the "PS2 on PS4" program back in 2015, and the PS5 wrapper was substantially upgraded in June 2024, adding a stack of features the original hardware never had:

• Up-rendered resolution — games render at up to quadruple their native resolution, then get output at up to 1080p/4K depending on the title
• Trophy support — several classics ship with full lists including Platinums (Sly Cooper, Tomb Raider: Legend and the Star Wars classics all have one)
• Rewind and save states — rewind the last few seconds of play, or quick-save/load anywhere with multiple slots
• Display options — aspect-ratio choices, retro CRT-style filters and a "modern" smoothing filter
• Cloud saves and home-screen art — they behave like native PS5 titles, with their own tiles, logos and descriptions

Which PS2 Games Are Actually on PS5?

The Classics Catalogue is curated, not comprehensive — Sony has to license and port each title individually, and the trickle has been slow. At the time of writing the PS2 selection sits at roughly fifty games, with the highlights including:

• Jak and Daxter — The Precursor Legacy, Jak II, Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing
• Sly Cooper — the full Sly trilogy, all with trophy support
• TimeSplitters — the complete trilogy: TimeSplitters, TimeSplitters 2 and Future Perfect
• Star Wars — Bounty Hunter, Jedi Starfighter, Racer Revenge, The Clone Wars and Episode III
• Tomb Raider: Legend — Lara's 2006 reboot
• RPGs and cult favourites — Dark Cloud, Dark Cloud 2, Rogue Galaxy, Wild Arms 3, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits, Okage: Shadow King
• Oddballs — PaRappa the Rapper 2, Ape Escape 2, Mister Mosquito, War of the Monsters, The Mark of Kri, Primal, Siren, SkyGunner

The omissions are as notable as the inclusions. There's no Grand Theft Auto (the PS2-era trilogy was pulled from sale when the Definitive Editions launched), no Metal Gear Solid 2 or 3, no Kingdom Hearts, no Gran Turismo 3 or 4, and the original God of War pair isn't there either — Sony points you at the PS3-era remaster collections where they exist. Roughly 1% of the PS2's library is playable this way, so treat the catalogue as a taster rather than a substitute for the real thing.

What It Costs

There are two ways in, and you can mix them:

• PlayStation Plus Premium — Sony's top subscription tier (£13.49/month or £119.99/year in the UK at the time of writing) includes the whole Classics Catalogue — PS2, PS1 and PSP downloads plus PS3 streaming — alongside the Extra-tier game catalogue. Cancel and you lose access to anything you haven't bought outright.
• Standalone purchases — most PS2 Classics can be bought individually on the PS Store for around £3.99–£15.99 each, no subscription needed, and they're yours permanently. Prices vary: Sly Cooper was £7.99 at its PS5 debut, Tomb Raider: Legend £15.99, Star Wars: The Clone Wars £3.99.

Neither option touches your physical collection: an old PS2 disc still does nothing on PS5, and there's no licence-transfer scheme like Microsoft's abandoned Xbox 360 disc programme. The only thing you ever "bring" to PS5 is your PSN account.

Other Ways to Play Your PS2 Library

If your goal is playing your games rather than Sony's chosen fifty, the honest answer is to look elsewhere:

• A real PS2 — cheap, complete and the most compatible option by definition; it even plays nearly the whole PS1 library natively. Our PS2 specs guide compares every model and our Slim guide covers which one to buy.
• An early PS3 — launch-era fat PS3s play PS2 discs natively or semi-natively, but only specific models; our PS3 backwards compatibility guide decodes which.
• PCSX2 on PC — the free, open-source emulator now runs almost the entire library with upscaling far beyond what PS5's official wrapper offers. Full setup in our PS2 emulator guide.
• A modded PS2 + OPL — run ISOs of your own discs from a hard drive or network share; see our PS2 ISO guide for the formats and the legalities.

Will More PS2 Games Come to PS5?

Very likely, but slowly. The June 2024 emulator upgrade — trophies, rewind, up-rendering — was clearly built as a reusable platform, and Sony has added small waves of PS2 titles since. Rights are the bottleneck: every game needs publisher sign-off, and many PS2-era publishers are defunct, absorbed, or sitting on soundtracks they can no longer license. Expect the catalogue to grow by a handful of games a year rather than hundreds.

The Verdict

Yes, you can play PS2 games on PS5 — but only the curated Classics Catalogue downloads, and only about fifty of the console's near-4,000 games. There's no disc support and no free upgrades for games you already own. For a casual replay of Jak, Sly or TimeSplitters with trophies and rewind, PS Plus Premium does the job nicely. For anything beyond that, the 155-million-selling original hardware — or PCSX2 — remains the way to explore the PS2 library properly. And if you do dust off the real thing, our cheats archive and games index are waiting.