The Fortnite Championship Series (FNCS), previously formally and still informally referred to as the Fortnite Champion Series, is the premier seasonal Fortnite Battle Royale tournament since 2019. FNCS is divided across seven regions, and generally takes place once every full length in-game season. From 2023 to 2025, the first three FNCS tournaments of each Chapter – known as "Majors" – have taken place during Seasons 1–3. These have served as qualifiers for the fourth season's FNCS Global Championship, an annual LAN tournament. This year's FNCS saw the addition of a mid-year FNCS LAN, and the absence of an FNCS during the first season.
Players earn FNCS leaderboard points through outlasting other players, or eliminating them. Although formats, squad sizes and points systems have changed over the years, the tournaments have always consisted of a set of qualification rounds and Grand Finals, whose victors are crowned "FNCS winners". Since 2025, Epic Games have also hosted annual in-person FNCS Pro-Am tournaments. Besides large prize money, winners are awarded an in-game harvesting tool known as the "Blade of Champions".
Not counting the FNCS Pro-Am, 31 FNCS events have been held—26 online and 5 global LAN tournaments.
Regions FNCS was initially contested across seven server regions: Europe, North America East, North America West, Brazil, Asia, Middle East, and Oceania. This lasted until 2023, when North America East and West were combined into North America Central. Ahead of the 2025 FNCS, North America West was reinstated a competitive region with North America Central remaining. On September 22, 2026, Epic Games announced the December 2026 reinstatement of North America East as a competitive region in a video featuring multiple-time FNCS winners Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf, Leon "Khanada" Khim and Miguel "Pollo" Moreno, as well as Cody "Clix" Conrod. With proximity to a server providing an in-game advantage, the physical server locations are kept secret, but reverse-engineering gives the following locations, according to an article by ESTNN from 2024: +Server locationsEuropeNorth AmericaBrazilAsiaMiddle EastOceania London Paris Ireland Frankfurt Milan Helsinki Portland Columbus San Francisco Los Angeles Kansas City Washington, D.C. DallasSão Paulo Mumbai Singapore Taiwan Seoul TokyoBahrainSydney Europe is often considered the hardest and most competitive region, with North America Central second in that regard. The two regions are the most-watched and feature the most prize money and FNCS Global Championship qualification spots.
History
2017–2019: Pre-FNCS
Epic Games didn't host any major regular Fortnite tournaments before FNCS. Instead, one-off tournaments such as the Fortnite Pro-Am, Summer Skirmish, Fall Skirmish and Winter Royale – each featuring $1,000,000 or more in prize money – were held in 2018. Notably, the Fall Skirmish series experienced server issues due to large amounts of players surviving into the closing stages of matches. This prompted Epic Games to introduce a game mechanic known as "storm surge", dealing damage to the players who have dealt the least amount of damage in case the player count exceeds a given threshold at a given stage of the match. This mechanic effectively motivates players to engage in combat, and plays an important role in FNCS tournaments to this day.
The Fortnite World Cup was announced in February 2019. Initially intended as an annual event, the COVID-19 pandemic rendered it a one-off tournament; Fortnite world champions are crowned at Global Championships nowadays. 2019–2021: Early tournaments with changing team sizes FNCS was first announced by Epic Games at the Fortnite World Cup. To compete in the first FNCS tournament, Season X, players had to achieve an in-game rank of "Champion", hence the name Fortnite Champion Series. Players in teams of three competed in five weekly tournaments, each awarding cumulative series points to qualify trios for the "Heats", these being set groups qualifying the highest-performing trios to the "Grand Finals". An age limit of 13 was set for FNCS participation, which persists to this day.
The system of weekly tournaments with cumulative series points, heats and Grand Finals remained into Chapter 2, but the team size changed to four players in Season 1, and two in Season 2. Starting in Chapter 2 Season 2, FNCS winners were awarded the Axe of Champions – an in-game harvesting tool with the FNCS logo – to use for the season following their victory.
During Week 1 of the North America East Chapter 2 Season 2 FNCS, duos Slackes and Keys; and Logan "Bucke" Eschenburg and Nate "Kreo" Kou, both of which were landing at the Slurpy Swamp location, were accused of colluding to circumvent the storm surge mechanic, trading shots and healing continuously without engaging in a serious fight. The duos finished the tournament first and second, respectively. Eschenburg argued on Twitter that they had trading similarly with other teams, and Keys argued that the practice was common in the competitive community. Nevertheless, Epic Games had explicitly disallowed collusion in any sense; thus, the four players – all of whom had previously qualified for the World Cup – were banned from competitive Fortnite for 60 days on March 23, 2020.
A recurring complaint during the early FNCS tournaments of Chapter 2 was the overpowered nature of "aim assist" – an in-game setting compensating for the supposed disadvantage of controller as opposed to keyboard and mouse. Then highest-followed Twitch streamer in the world and FNCS player Tyler "Ninja" Blevins was among those critical of aim assist. This was supported by clips of controller players "beaming" their enemies, i.e. hitting abnormally many shots in a row, notably from Chapter 2 Season 1 FNCS winner Domnick "UnknownxArmy" Green. Although FNCS was split between PC and console/mobile from Seasons 2–4 of Chapter 2, Epic Games weakened aim assist several times in 2020.
On April 24, 2020, Epic Games announced the FNCS Invitational; a solo tournament across all regions. The tournament – taking place in May, 2020 – featured the Grand Finalists from all previous FNCS tournaments, along with 100 players having qualified from an open qualifier, and up to 100 players invited by Epic Games.
The Chapter 2 Season 3 FNCS was also played in solos, but the game mode switched back to trios for the rest of Chapter 2's regular FNCS tournaments, starting in Season 4, with the series points and heats system remaining.
In June, 2021, Epic Games hosted the FNCS All-Star Showdown, which was contested in several events; its Battle Royale tournament was played in solos. It featured one qualifying round and one Grand Finals across all regions. Then, in Chapter 2 Season 8, Epic Games hosted the 2021 FNCS Grand Royale; a trio FNCS featuring qualification rounds on November 11–14 and Grand Finals on November 19–21. These events were played apart from the regular seasonal FNCS tournaments.
2022–2024: Seasonal duos tournaments and annual global LANs
In 2022, following the launch of Chapter 3, the competitive game mode switched to duos. The chapter featured three seasonal FNCS tournaments from which the 50 best-performing duos selected by Epic Games qualified to the FNCS Invitational 2022, taking place in Chapter 3 Season 4. Similar to previous FNCS tournaments, Chapter 3 FNCS tournaments consisted of a qualification stage awarding series points, semi-finals and Grand Finals. The original Axe of Champions was replaced by the "Axe of Champions 2.0", featuring the updated FNCS logo in Chapter 3 Season 2.
The FNCS Invitational 2022 was held in-person in Raleigh on November 11–12, 2022.
Chapters 4 and 5 featured similar FNCS formats as Chapter 3, with the same team size and strictly seasonal tournaments. Epic Games did however lower the rank requirement to participate from "Champion" to "Contender", as well as naming the tournaments Major 1, 2, and 3 respectively, each Major taking place in the corresponding season. Additionally, the fourth season's Invitational LAN was replaced with a Global Championship, for which 50 qualification spots were awarded by high FNCS Grand Finals placements.
Upon a ranked system overhaul in May 2023, the barrier to entering FNCS tournaments was set to "Platinum" rank or above, starting in Chapter 4 Season 3. Additionally, "siphon", a gameplay mechanic giving giving Health and Shield to players upon eliminating an enemy player, was removed from the new ranked mode, as well as tournaments including FNCS, after having been a part of competitive Fortnite Battle Royale since the introduction of Arena Mode in 2019. The removal was poorly received among the community; streamer and professional player Cody "Clix" Conrod responded to its announcement on Twitter, writing "this gotta be a joke", with then five-time FNCS winner Matthew "Mero" Faitel responding by calling the removal a "crazy change".
In addition to Majors 1, 2, and 3, a "Last Chance Major" tournament was held in August, 2023, qualifying a further 25 duos to the 2023 FNCS Global Championship.
The 2023 FNCS Major 3 winners Egor "SwizzY" Luciko and Daniil "Putrick" Abdrakhmanov, and Last Chance Major qualifying duo NeFrizi and Vladislav "Howly" Korobkin; all Russian players, were disqualified for the 2023 FNCS Global Championship due to sanctions by Epic Games.
The 2023 FNCS Global Championship was held in Copenhagen on October 13–15, 2023. On the first day, the 49 qualified duos through Majors 1, 2 and 3 competed in the Upper Bracket for 25 spots in the third day's Grand Finals. On the second day, the bottom 24 duos in the Upper Bracket competed in the Lower Bracket against the 24 qualified duos from the Last Chance Major for the remaining 25 spots in the Grand Finals.
The Fortnite Champion Series was renamed to the "Fortnite Championship Series" ahead of Chapter 5. Much like Chapter 4, Chapter 5 featured three FNCS Majors and one FNCS Global Championship, the latter taking place in Fort Worth on September 7–8, 2024. There was no Last Chance Major in 2024, and the 2024 FNCS Global Championship featured 50 duos. Chapter 5's FNCS Majors each featured two open qualifiers each awarding series points, leading to semi finals consisting of a lower and upper bracket, in turn leading to the FNCS Grand Finals.
One day before the 2024 FNCS Major 3 Grand Finals, Epic Games updated the "slurp cacti", which gave players 30 effective health when harvested, to no longer respawn. The update was heavily criticized for its proximity to the Grand Finals, as many players' strategies revolved around trading damage with opponents and healing continuously with the slurp cacti to accumulate storm surge damage.
2025–present: Divisional system + 2024 siphon trialsDatesDetailsSeptember 24–3040 Effective Health instantlyOctober 1–750 Effective Health instantlyOctober 8–1425 Effective Health instantlyOctober 15-2175 Health over timeOctober 22–2850 Health instantlyOctober 29–November 425 Health and 25 Shield instantly Following the 2024 Global Championship, Epic Games reintroduced siphon in the form of "siphon trials", which saw different variations of siphon introduced to the Ranked mode and tournaments on a weekly basis during a six-week period between September and November 2024. The mechanic has stayed in tournaments since then.