The arrival of the holidays in the real world means Fortnite is kicking off Winterfest, which adds a layer of snow and ice to the northern half of the Battle Royale map, introduces a bunch of new collaborations with other IP, and offers tons of new free and paid cosmetics–including two free Fortnite-original skins. Scroll on to take a look at everything Winterfest is bringing us this year–don’t wait long to jump in, because this celebration ends on January 5.
All the collabs
As is usually the case with Winterfest, there will be lots of new collaboration cosmetics in the item shop. Three entirely new collaborations have already been revealed: Harry Potter, SpongeBob Squarepants, and Bleach. Harry Potter is getting a set of generic Fortnite people wearing Hogwarts uniforms, whereas Bleach appears to include four skins based on characters from the series. We’re also getting a car based on the SpongeBob Squarepants Patty Wagon, and that collab will reportedly also feature SpongeBob and Patrick as sidekicks.
Meanwhile, the Back to the Future collab from the current battle pass is getting new items in the shop on December 23, with a Doc Brown skin, and a car skin based on the DeLorean time machine. If you already had the time machine in Rocket League, you’ll get it in Fortnite without having to pay for it again.
Two existing music collabs are also expanding this Winterfest, with both Hatsune Miku and Sabrina Carpenter getting new holiday-themed skins, as well as a new jam track for each of them.
Lastly, there are a few collabs that are rumored but still unconfirmed, like Home Alone and Batman Beyond. We don’t even know for sure if these are happening, but there’s still a little bit of room left on the schedule for more things.
Free stuff
The Winterfest Cabin is once again available to explore from the Fortnite lobby, and it’s full of presents that you can open once per day for the next two weeks. Among these presents are two skins: a frozen crash-test dummy, and a hamster wearing a holiday sweater. There’s also two back blings, two pickaxes, two musical instruments, a glider, a weapon wrap, a jam track, and a few sprays and emoticons. These free rewards stack each day even if you don’t log in, so it’s possible to pop in at the end and redeem all the presents at once.
Despite the fact that the cabin is full of Harry Potter references and the movie theme plays while you visit it, none of the free items is related to that franchise.
Let it snow
In the main Battle Royale mode, the northern half of the island is now covered in snow, and locations all over the map got holiday makeovers with new Christmas trees and holiday lights. While I understand why Epic didn’t cover the parts of the map based on Los Angeles with snow, it would have been nice to see Fortnite’s version of my home turned into a winter wonderland, since we never get that in the real world.
Winter loot
Fortnite has unvaulted a couple of its traditional winter weapons–the blizzard grenade, and the snowball launcher–for Winterfest, and presents are back as well. But these presents are a little bit different this time, because they don’t give items from the normal loot pool. More on this below.
Going back in time
The Back to the Future time machine isn’t just a car skin in the item shop–it’s also a vehicle parked on the map. Going 88 miles per hour while driving it will give you a brief time-travel animation and add a new plutonium chest to the roof–which is full of weapons from the Fortnite OG loot pool, like the original Assault Rifle and the Lever-Action Shotgun, instead of current BR weapons. This year’s presents likewise drop items from the OG loot pool, so they should be fairly plentiful.
A new joke boss
A fourth boss that you can play as after you defeat him has been added to the island. This one, Yule Trooper, has an extremely impractical ability: You’ll have icy feet at all times while playing as this boss. It’ll be very difficult to fight that way, and you’ll want to stay far away from any ledges–fall damage is one of the leading causes of death for people with icy feet.
Less Harry Potter than we expected
Even though the Hogwarts student skins are in the key art, and the Winterfest Cabin is full of references to it, Fortnite’s collaboration with the immensely controversial brand apears to consist only of item shop cosmetics and marketing. There are no Harry Potter-themed locations on the Battle Royale island, no free Harry Potter cosmetics in the Winterfest cabin, and no related gameplay items–at least not yet. It’s impossible for us to know if Epic planned it this way from the start, or if they scaled the collab back because of the negative response from some players. But it’s extremely unusual for a Fortnite collab that has no gameplay component and isn’t part of a battle pass to be included in key art.
