How to release or pop Balloons in Fortnite Chapter 5, season 4

Be careful when you do.

Marigold flying with Balloons in Fortnite.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

One of the festive items you can acquire to celebrate Fortnite’s seventh anniversary is Balloons. While soaring through the sky with them can be quite fun, you also need to release or pop Balloons for an essential birthday quest.

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There are lots of different ways you can finish this quest and most of them are pretty confusing. You need to work through it if you want to earn all of the available birthday prizes, so here’s how to release or pop balloons in Fortnite.

Release or pop Balloons in Fortnite, explained

Captain Marvel flying with Birthday Balloons in Fortnite.
Up, up, and away you go. Screenshot by Dot Esports

To complete the release or pop Balloons quest in Fortnite, you need to have a total of seven Balloons released or popped. There are a few different ways you can finish this task.

  • Have seven Balloons released. This is the easiest and most efficient way to complete this task since you can manually release balloons as needed.
  • Have seven Balloons popped. If you choose this method, completing this quest may take some time since it’s tougher to pop balloons yourself. You either need to find some enemies to complete this quest or hunt down some decorative Balloons around the island.
  • Have a mix of seven Balloons released and popped. You can mix and match between both methods to get this quest done, and if you want to work on it in the background while focusing on other tasks, this is the best option to choose.

Regardless of which method you want to use to finish this task, the first step is to find Balloons.

How to get Balloons in Fortnite

Captain Marvel standing behind a golden birthday medallion in Fortnite.
Your best bet is to get a Birthday Medallion. Screenshot by Dot Esports

There are two different ways you can acquire Balloons in Fortnite which are the Birthday Medallion and the Balloon consumable item.

  • To get Balloons from the Birthday Medallion, you need to find and open a Birthday Present. Once you have the Medallion equipped, you’ll slowly generate Balloons over time.
  • To get Balloons from the Balloon consumable item, you have to loot around the map to find them. They can appear as loot in chests, on the ground, and any other looting method you can think of.

Since there’s no way to guarantee you find the Balloons consumable, I recommend trying to get a Birthday Medallion. You also only get 10 Balloons from the consumable while the Medallion continuously generates more, so to ensure you’re able to finish this task, grabbing a Medallion is the best way to go.

How to release Balloons in Fortnite

To release Balloons in Fortnite, you need to have at least one equipped and select the button that appears next to the To release a Balloon option. This button varies by platform and if you’ve changed any of your button settings, but it always displays to your right when you have a Balloon that can be released.

The wording here can make this task a bit confusing as you might think releasing a Balloon refers to blowing up another Balloon to add to your collection. Instead, though, it only means to let one go. The Balloon disappears as soon as you select this option, so make sure you aren’t way up in the sky or you’ll end up falling to your death.

The release a balloon option marked in Fortnite.
Don’t release your Balloons when you’re way up in the air. Screenshot by Dot Esports. Remix by Dot Esports

How to pop Balloons in Fortnite

To pop Balloons in Fortnite, you either need to wait for an enemy to shoot one on your back, shoot at an enemy player to pop one of their Balloons, or find a balloon you can break around the map. You’ve got plenty of options if you choose this method.

If you want to wait for an enemy player to pop one of your Balloons, you need to make sure you have some equipped when you’re near them and just wait for them to pop. Try to stay close to the ground with this method to avoid taking fall damage. To pop enemy player Balloons, keep an eye on the sky and quickly shoot at any players you see flying around.

The easiest way to pop Balloons is to hunt down some decorative Balloons around the main POIs, generally the same ones you can visit to eat slices of birthday cake, and pop them using your Pickaxe. There are usually a few of them near the massive cakes, so this is another fairly easy way to tackle this quest.

Author
Image of Kacee Fay
Kacee Fay
Staff Writer at Dot Esports covering new releases and a wide array of topics including Minecraft, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Phasmophobia, general gaming, streaming, and more. She has been avidly writing and gaming her whole life and now spends her time combining the two. Kacee graduated from San Diego State University in 2021 with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Certificate in Creative Editing and Publishing. She then joined Dot Esports as a Freelance Writer in 2022 before transitioning to a Staff Writer in 2023. In her spare time, she enjoys buying more books than she can read, gaming alone or with friends, drinking too much tea, attending concerts, fangirling over movies and television, listening to music, and spending time with her family, friends, and pets, who are the most important parts of her world.