Here’s the exact time ‘Fortnite’ Winterfest 2024 starts and what to expect

Christmas is approaching Fortnite. The festive event hasn’t started yet, but the map is already covered in snow and ice, and a giant blue ice block with a fun surprise in the middle has appeared in the middle of the map.

For years now, Fortnite has celebrated the Christmas holidays with a big, gift-filled event called Winterfest. Every year, Christmas trees appear across the map and the Winterfest Lodge is filled with gifts. Inside these gifts are different cosmetic gifts that you can unwrap every day. This was scrapped for last year’s Winterfest, where daily login rewards replaced gifts, but it was deeply unpopular and Epic has listened to fans. Gifts will return in 2024. (Whoever thought it was a good idea to get rid of gifts is misunderstanding 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.

When does Winterfest 2024 begin?

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

• 12pm PST for the west coast of North America
• 3:00 PM EST for the east coast of North America
• 8 at GMT for Great Britain
• 9 at CET for western mainland Europe
• 05:00 JST on Sat. December 21 for Japan
• 7am AEDT on Sat. December 21 for the east coast of Australia

What will be in the gifts this year?

A variety of sprays, music tracks and other cosmetics await in the gifts this year, but the most exciting free gifts are the two skins. This is a festive Christmas snoop dog skin and the Yulejacket skin:

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

Shop skins for new items

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 ones include a Santa Shaq skin as well as the Mariah Carey skin.

What to expect

Skating is one of the biggest new features coming to Winterfest, although it looks like the skates in question will actually just be equippable blocks of ice that go on players’ feet, which is a bit of a disappointment compared to actual skates.

In addition to this, there are typically special game modes that go live during a Winterfest event, although it’s currently unclear what that will be this year. Special Winterfest challenges are almost always part of the event as well, so expect some fun new quests to tackle as you get into the Christmas spirit.

Holiday-themed weapons will also appear. Some of the typical Christmas items include:

• Holiday gifts
• Sneaked Snowmando
• Snowball Launcher.
• Snowy Flopper
• Icy grips

Other new items may also arrive atop 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!