How to gift Nintendo Switch games: 4 steps, but family only

The process runs entirely on the console, inside the eShop, and Nintendo has spelled out four steps:

1. Open the Nintendo eShop on your Switch or Switch 2 and go to the page of the game you want to give.
2. On that product page, tick the Give as a Gift box, then carry on to checkout.
3. Choose who gets it from the list of people in your family group. You can also pick which of their linked consoles the gift lands on.
4. Pick a gift wrap color and any other options, then pay the normal way.

That last step is the point of no return. Nintendo warns that a gift goes out the moment you finish paying, so don’t buy it until you actually want the other person to see it.

It isn’t only full games. Eligible DLC and upgrade packs can be sent as gifts too, which is handy if someone in the family already owns a game and you want to add its expansion or its Switch 2 upgrade.

What the recipient sees on their console

The gift shows up on the recipient’s HOME Menu, the main screen they see when the console turns on. From there they can select it, accept it, and start playing right away once it downloads.

Supervised child accounts can receive gifts this way too, even though they can’t send them.

Everything hinges on the family group. This Nintendo Account feature exists mainly so up to eight people can share a family Nintendo Switch Online plan and so parents can manage children’s accounts. Nintendo says anyone with a Nintendo Account can create one and add members, and it points people to its support site for how to do it.

For gifting, the group rules work like this:

• Only group members can receive. People on your Switch friends list who aren’t in your group are out of luck.
• The group holds eight accounts at most, and that count includes you.
• Supervised accounts can’t send. These are the child accounts that parents control through parental settings. They can still receive a gift, but they can’t buy one for anyone else.
• You choose the console. If the recipient has more than one linked system, you pick which one gets the game.

In practice, this makes the feature a perfect fit for a parent buying games for a child, or for a couple, or for siblings who already share one Switch Online family plan. It’s much less useful if you want to treat a friend, since adding someone to your family group just to send them one game is a lot of setup.

Nintendo listed several limits up front, and a couple of them are vague.

• Not every product qualifies. Nintendo says some products may not be eligible for gifting, but it hasn’t published a list, so check for the Give as a Gift box on a product page before you plan around it.
• There’s a cap on gifts. Nintendo limits how many gift purchases you can make in a set period. It hasn’t said what that number is, or whether the limit counts items, item types or money spent.
• No scheduling. Unlike some other stores, you can’t set a gift to arrive on a chosen day. It lands the minute you pay.
• No gifting to friends outside the group. This is the big one, and it’s why many players were disappointed. Steam and Xbox already let you gift digital games, so Nintendo’s version feels limited by comparison.

The no-scheduling rule matters most for holiday shopping. Nintendo says each gift goes out the moment the purchase is complete, with no option to pick a delivery date.

Nintendo’s own announcement page says gifting arrives in the Nintendo eShop on Nov. 16. The patch notes for system update 23.5.0, however, say the feature turns on after an eShop update scheduled for November 17, 2026. Several news reports, and Nintendo’s US announcement, go with Nov. 16.

Either way, the gifting window opens in mid-November, well ahead of the holidays.

A few minutes of prep now saves a frustrating evening later.

1. Update your console. Gifting only works on systems running version 23.5 or newer, which Nintendo released on Nov. 9 for both Switch and Switch 2. The update should download by itself if your console is online. You can also check your version and start the update by hand from System Settings.
2. Make sure the recipient updates too. Nintendo says the feature works on systems that support version 23.5 or later, so it’s sensible for everyone in the group to install it.
3. Check your family group. If the person you want to gift isn’t in your group yet, add them now. Remember the eight-account ceiling.
4. Decide who pays. A supervised child account can’t send gifts, so purchases have to come from an account in the group that isn’t supervised.

The 23.5 update also adds a few smaller changes. On Switch 2, you can now set accessibility options during first-time setup, and Portuguese (Portugal) joins the text-to-speech languages, including for GameChat. Updates for the Switch 2 dock and Pro Controller arrived alongside it.

The previous big system update came in September. It brought VRR support in docked mode on Switch 2, along with music for Mii Maker.

Until now, giving someone a digital Switch game usually meant buying a Nintendo eShop gift card. For family members, the new feature removes that step. For friends outside your group, Nintendo hasn’t added a direct gifting option, so you’ll still need another route.

Family group members have one more trick already. They can already lend each other Virtual Game Cards. Gifting is the next step for those groups: instead of borrowing your copy, the other person gets a game bought for them.

In short, the Give as a Gift box suits kids, partners and anyone already in your family group. It does nothing yet for friends outside it.