With very little fanfare or promotion in advance, Fortnite just surprised its players with a new live event that took place during rounds of Battle Royale at 3 PM PT on Thursday afternoon–not really when anybody is expecting a Fortnite event to go down. The event saw a rocket saw a rocket emerge from the recently added red rift in the sky, before flying around a bit through several other rifts, and then it eventually landed at Classified Canyon. In all, the event lasted about 90 seconds. Check out a replay of the event below.
THE VISITOR IS NOW ON THE CHAPTER 7 ISLAND
FULL MINI LIVE EVENT pic.twitter.com/2ntX52FSOw— Shiina (@ShiinaBR) February 19, 2026
What’s interesting about this event is that it was basically the same as the rocket launch event that occurred in Chapter 1 Season 4, and which was repeated last summer in Fortnite OG, but this time it happened in reverse. In that past event, the visitor took off from the island, flew through several rifts, and then left through a new rift–the rift being red was a new wrinkle in the OG re-do. But this time he arrived through the rift and landed on the island.
What does that mean? It’s hard to say just yet, but after the event ended, a new line of story quests was added to BR, and you can talk to The Visitor himself next to his rocket at Classified Canyon to get a few new details. One more set of new story quests will drop next week as well.
This new live event was noticed first by dataminers and leakers, with Fortnite’s own socials only teasing it five minutes in advance. It’s not Epic’s usual promotion strategy for these sorts of things, but that’s exactly why it was such a nice surprise.