This weekend in front of nearly 10,000 fans at a sold-out arena in Lyon-Décines, France, professional Fortnite players Aleksa “Queasy” Cvetkovic, Egor “SwizzY” Luciko, and Andrejs “Merstach” Piratovs were crowned champions of the FNCS 2025 Global Championship, splitting an estimated $400,000 USD in prize money.
With the conclusion of its championship event of the season, Fortnite maker Epic Games revealed early details on its roadmap for Fortnite Competitive in 2026 (with some components of its kicking off later this year) including a new Fortnite Mobile competition, improvements to competitive modes within the game, and new events. Most important to players – next year’s competitive roadmap will focus on duos competition instead of Trios.
YOUR FORTNITE GLOBAL CHAMPIONS 2025:
🏆 @QueasyFN
🏆 @Merstach
🏆 @SwizzY281 pic.twitter.com/PrEThss0NS— Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) September 7, 2025
Viewership Numbers
But before we detail that, viewership analytics platform Esports Charts revealed some interesting numbers for the FNCS 2025 Global Championship. According to data from Esports Charts, the competition at its peak garnered 954,473 live viewers—only being beaten by past popular competitions such as the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am 2018 and the Fortnite World Cup 2019. FNCS 2025 Global Championship was streamed across approximately 770 channels, up from a little less than 200 channels in 2024. Compared to the FNCS in 2024, average viewership grew by approximately 25.2%, with total watch time up by 7.9%, even with the event having fewer broadcast hours in 2025. Hours watched clocked in at nearly 8 million, peaker viewership came in att nearly 1 million, average viewers of nearly 700,000, and airtime of nearly 11 million hours.
More details on viewership numbers can be found in this Esports Charts story.
The Road Ahead for 2025-2026
The biggest announcement made in France over the weekend following the crowing of new champions were plans for Epic Games and BLAST to work together on a Fortnite Mobile global competition, which will offer a total prize pool of $1 million. Details on that competition are to be announced at a later date.
Other big competitive news coming out of FNCS 2025 includes plans for FNCS Mid-Season LAN (an international event), Reload Elite Series LAN ( a championship-caliber competition focused on Fortnite Reload, the fast-paced Fortnite Battle Royale mode that utilizes a condensed map with past locations and weapons from the game), and the return of the Fortnite Pro-Am (featuring celebrities and content creators teaming up with professional players to compete). Other plans to overhaul Fortnite’s ranked system (being called “Ranked 2.0”), and more dates for European LAN competitions. Details on all of these plans are still to be revealed.
Keep an eye on the official Fortnite Competitive blog for more details in the days and months ahead.