Epic Games has decided it needs a little more time to get Fortnite working right again before we move onto Chapter 7 Season 2. The two-week delay was announced a day after the latest game update caused hitching and crashes when loading into the lobby or readying up for a match, the latest in a series of stability issues that have plagued Fortnite over the past month.
Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 2 is now scheduled to begin on March 19.
We’re taking one more fortnite for next season – CH7S2 drops March 19
*opens the loot vault & starts cooking* pic.twitter.com/ilQCpXiD3S— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) February 6, 2026
This rash of stability issues seemed to begin when the South Park collaboration event started on January 9. That update caused the UI in the game lobby to hitch every time a player did pretty much anything–emoting, choosing game modes, browsing the locker, etc. Those issues appeared to be solved with the update on January 22, but that patch caused new issues like game crashes and UI lag in matches, and it required both an extra round of emergency maintenance and a bonus game update to deal with the problems it introduced.
And now the current update, released on Thursday, causes lengthy hitches–as long as 5-10 seconds–when returning to the lobby from a match or readying up on PC and current-gen platforms. On older consoles like PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, those hitches can become outright crashes.
Given the difficulty Epic has had in stamping out these stability problems, a delay for Season 2 is probably a good thing. Yes, the delay means that Season 1 will end up running for nearly four months, which is extremely long for a Fortnite season, but that’s gotta be preferable to Season 2 launching in a potentially broken state.
Meanwhile, this week also saw the launch of Chappell Roan season in Fortnite Festival, which introduced a new music pass that includes a Chappell Roan skin, and jam tracks for her song Pink Pony Club and David Bowie’s Starman. Check it out below.
