The much-anticipated Fortnite World Cup is finally happening this summer — and there’s going to be a lot of money up for grabs. Today developer Epic detailed the upcoming e-sports event, which will culminate in a final tournament at an undisclosed location in New York from July 26th to the 28th.
The multi-day event will feature what is possibly the biggest prize pool in e-sports history, with a total of $30 million up for grabs, including $3 million to the solo champion. In comparison, last year’s International Dota 2 tournament, typically the most lucrative e-sports competition, featured a $25 million prize pool. Participants in the Fortnite World Cup will have to be at least 13 yeas of age to qualify.
As part of the reveal, Epic also detailed the qualifying process for the event. Between April 13th and June 16th, the developer will run 10 online qualifying tournaments, each with a $1 million prize pool that Epic says will be “distributed broadly.” From these competitions Epic will determine the top 100 solo Fortnite players, as well as the 50 best duos, who will then go on to the finals in New York, where each participant is guaranteed at least $50,000 in earnings.
The Fortnite World Cup was first announced last year at E3, when Epic pledged a staggering $100 million for e-sports over the coming year. Since then, the developer has experimented with different formats, and while things got off to a shaky start, Fortnite e-sports have steadily improved. Along the way, Epic introduced new competitive-focused features like in-game tournaments, and promised not to introduce game-changing features like the dreaded Infinity Blade before major tournaments.
Outside of the World Cup, Epic says that it will continue to run major events throughout the year, with additional $1 million tournaments that “will feature a wider variety of modes and formats to open up the competitive playing field. We will also provide tournament tools and prizing to select partners to better serve competitive Fortnite in more countries and regions around the world on our way to awarding the full $100,000,000 in 2019.”