Fortnite Winter Royale Tournament Announced With $1m Prize Pool

Fortnite esports kicked off properly earlier this year with the Summer Skirmish, an eight-week long series of invite-only tournaments with $8 million up for grabs. Following that, there was the Fall Skirmish which lasted for six weeks and concluded at TwitchCon. Across all of the official Skirmish tournaments, FaZe has the two top earners, with Turner “Tfue” Tenney on $465,425 and Dennis “CloaK” Lepore on $418,650. Now though, Epic has announced the Fortnite Winter Royale tournament which will allow absolutely everyone to compete for $1 million via the in-game tournament system.

The Fortnite Winter Royale starts this weekend! $1,000,000 up for grabs in Fortnite's first open competition with cash prizes.

Find out how you can participate here: https://t.co/j4mbqPUFJH pic.twitter.com/Amx2JLyduM

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) November 20, 2018

In a blog post on the official Fortnite esports site, Epic has revealed the Winter Royale will have two parts: The Winter Royale Qualifiers and the Winter Royale Finals. These are solo tournaments so you won’t need to rely on your friends to join you to compete. Like the previous tournaments we’ve seen in-game, there will be multiple event sessions and your highest score during one of these session is what counts. This means that if you have a bad day, you can jump back in during one of the later sessions for another shot at qualifying.

Each of the top performers from NA and EU will be invited to the Winter Royale Finals for their respective region. Epic has confirmed that while this is just for NA and EU, more regions will be able to compete in tournaments later down the line. If you’re looking to compete, here are the dates of the Winter Royale tournaments:

• Winter Royale Qualifier: 11/24/2018 - 11/25/2018

• EU Winter Royale Finals: 11/30/2018 - 12/1/2018

• NA Winter Royale Finals: 12/11/2018 - 12/12/2018

In the same blog post, Epic has also revealed that they’ve made some “critical fixes” to the in-game tournament system, including the matchmaking. Pop-Up Cups have also started to appear which are essentially competitive LTMs so Epic can “test large adjustments in a more competitive environment.”

In other Fortnite news, read about how Dynamite was added to the game today, then removed after less than an hour.