Here’s The Exact Time ‘Fortnite’ Winterfest 2024 Starts And What To Expect

Christmas is coming to Fortnite. The festive event hasn’t yet begun, but the map is already covered in snow and ice and a giant blue ice block with a funny surprise in the center has appeared in the center of the map.

For years now, Fortnite has celebrated the Christmas holiday season with a big, present-filled event called Winterfest. Each year, Christmas trees pop up over the map and the Winterfest Lodge is filled with presents. Inside these presents are various cosmetic gifts, free to unwrap each day of the event. This was scrapped for last year’s Winterfest, with daily login rewards replacing gifts, but that was deeply unpopular and Epic has listened to fans. Presents return for 2024. (Whoever thought getting rid of presents was a good idea badly misunderstands the Fortnite community).

This year, Winterfest will bring back snowballs and add ice-skating to the mix, which actually sounds like a lot of fun. Here’s everything you need to know about the Winterfest 2024 event.

What Time does Winterfest 2024 begin?

The Winterfest event begins at 12pm PT / 3pm ET this year. That translates to the below times:

• 12 p.m. PST for the west coast of North America
• 3 p.m. EST for the east coast of North America
• 8 p.m. GMT for the U.K.
• 9 p.m. CET for west mainland Europe
• 5 a.m. JST on Sat. Dec. 21 for Japan
• 7 a.m. AEDT on Sat. Dec. 21 for the east coast of Australia

What Will Be In The Presents This Year?

A variety of sprays, music tracks and other cosmetics will be waiting in the presents this year, but the most exciting free gifts are the two skins. These are a festive Christmas Snoop Dogg skin and the Yulejacket skin:

It appears a Christmas Tree Guff skin will also be available, possibly as another free Winterfest skin, though it may end up in the Shop instead.

New Item Shop Skins

A bunch of other skins and cosmetics are expected in the Item Shop during the Winterfest event, including some older Winterfest offerings. Some of the best include a Santa Shaq skin as well as the Mariah Carey skin.

What To Expect

Ice-skating is one of the biggest new features coming to Winterfest, though it appears that the ice skates in question will actually just be equippable ice blocks that go on players’ feet, which is a bit of a disappointment compared to actual skates.

Beyond this, there are typically special game modes that go live during a Winterfest event, though it’s unclear at this time what those will be this year. Special Winterfest challenges are also almost always part of the event, so expect some fun new quests to tackle as you get into the holiday spirit.

Holiday-themed weapons will also make an appearance. Some of the typical Christmas items include:

• Holiday Presents
• Sneaky Snowmando
• Snowball Launcher.
• Snowy Flopper
• Icy Grappler

Other new items may also arrive on top of ice-block-skates.

And that’s pretty much all we know at the moment. If we learn anything new, I’ll update this post. Happy Holidays!