'Fortnite' Winter Royale Tournament With $1 Million Prize Pool Starts This Weekend

Fall Skirmish has just ended, but Epic Games already announced a new tournament for “Fortnite” battle royale. Epic Games’ new “Fortnite” tournament is called Winter Royale and everyone will have the chance to participate.

Winter Royale is composed of two stages: qualifiers and finals. The qualifiers will be open to everyone and players who want to jump in to compete will be able to access the tournament from the in-game menu of “Fortnite” battle royale. The tournament will only feature Solo matches, which means that players will have to compete on their own. The qualifiers will begin this Saturday, Nov. 24, and will end the following day.

Just like the other in-game tournaments in “Fortnite,” participants will be tossed inside lobbies with other players, as pointed out by Polygon. Participants will have to earn points to qualify for the finals. Points will be granted depending on the number of eliminations and high finishes. Those who have the highest points will be qualified to compete in the finals.

“There will be several chances for anyone to try and get a high score during the Winter Royale Qualifier days,” Epic Games said in a blog post. “The highest score you achieve during any event session will be the one that counts, so be sure to give it your all!”

There are two separate Winter Royale finals for players in Europe and in North America. The EU Winter Royale finals will take place on Nov. 13 until Dec. 1, while the NA finals will happen between Dec. 11 and 12. Epic Games will be giving away prizes from the tournament’s $1 million prize pool. Although Winter Royale will only be available in two regions, Epic said that it plans on holding other tournaments in other regions in the near future.

Epic Games also said that this Winter Royale tournament is being used as a test for next year’s Fortnite World Cup. The developer is planning to use the in-game tournament system for the World Cup, which may also feature the same point structure and format of Winter Royale.

“The Online Tournament system will be used next year to determine participants in the Fortnite World Cup. Starting later this month, we will hold a test event that will emulate the World Cup Qualification process. This will help us gather valuable learnings to better prepare for the process next year,” Epic Games said. “As part of our ongoing competitive tests to prepare for the Fortnite World Cup, Winter Royale will use the same game settings as the currently available Pop-Up Cup.”