Epic Games’ battle royale giant, Fortnite, was dropped from the massive Esports World Cup lineup, and now we know the real reason why that happened and how it made a comeback in EWC 2026.
In 2025, the Riyadh-based event packed stadiums with titles such as Counter-Strike 2, PUBG Mobile, EA FC 25, and more, but Fortnite was nowhere to be found. It marked a big shift after the game had shown up in 2024, leaving everyone wondering what went wrong.
In January 2026, the EWC organizers gave more insights in a press conference. According to Fabian Scheuermann, the Chief Games Officer at EWC, “First of all, and the most important factor is we had in the early years of Fortnite, we used UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) and created our own maps and modes, and it simply didn’t work.”
EWC CEO Ralf Reichert spelled it out bluntly in an Al Ekhbariya interview during the 2025 event. Fortnite, he said, “lacks competitive tools” and “doesn’t have a huge competitive ecosystem” compared to the rest of the field.
While Fortnite boasts millions of casual players and wild collabs, its pro scene leans more on Epic’s own FNCS Majors and Champions Road events, which don’t always mesh with club-focused formats like EWC’s Club Championship.
Reichert wasn’t knocking the game’s popularity, though. “Fortnite is an amazing game and has a huge community,” he noted, but organizers wanted titles purpose-built for high-stakes, scalable tourneys with reliable matchmaking and anti-cheat baked in. Without that tight fit, Fortnite sat out in 2025.
Fortnite Reload changes the game at Esports World Cup 2026
Fast-forward to late 2025, and the story flipped as Epic Games and EWC announced a multi-year partnership in 2026, spotlighting Fortnite‘s Reload mode, which is a respawn-heavy, duo-focused twist that’s exploding in popularity.
Scheuermann highlighted how Reload wasn’t even around during those failed UEFN tests. Now, it’s co-hosted with Epic, culminating in a $1 million EWC final that feeds into the Club Championship.
This collab “ticks all of the boxes,” as per Scheuermann, with commitments from both sides to build it long-term. Open qualifiers, play-ins, heats, and finals lead to Riyadh, pulling in top duos from every region.
Now we are going into the Reload series, which wasn’t even there back in the days when we tried it, but now in the deep partnership that we’re building with Epic on this, and also it’s going to be a co-hosted series, so we are really partnering on this, and the final will be at EWC.
Fortnite is one of the new additions to the massive 24-title lineup at EWC 2026, alongside Trackmania, holding a share of the massive prize pool of $75 million.
EWC’s choices are clear, which is that hype alone won’t cut it anymore. Organizers are laser-focused on sustainable ecosystems that draw crowds and keep pros coming back. Fortnite‘s bounce-back shows flexibility, but 2025 was the wake-up call. As Scheuermann stressed, getting publishers and communities on board early is crucial to hit wider audiences beyond hardcore esports fans.
