Imagine the frustration when you try logging into Fortnite to check out the new season and see the dreaded “servers unavailable” message.
Since you’re here, you’re probably wondering why the servers aren’t up ahead of Fortnite Chapter Five, season three. Don’t worry—you aren’t the only player facing this. Here’s why.
Why are the Fortnite servers down?
With season three coming in, Epic Games is preparing Fortnite’s backend for the update, hence the downtime. At the moment, you should be able to download the season three update, but server maintenance is still ongoing, so you won’t be able to access the servers or play the game.
Be patient because you can’t do anything to “fix” a server downtime, which can sometimes be longer than usual.
Chapter Five, season three marks the exit of the Greek Gods and pushes in the “Wasteland Warriors” with the Wrecked update. Of course, it carries a lot of new content for you to unbox. The patch size for this one is larger than the usual seasons, so be prepared for an update close to 50GB, depending on your platform.
When will Fortnite servers be back up?
The Fortnite servers were taken down at 1am CT (8am CEST) for maintenance. At the time of writing, Epic Games has announced the update is live. You can enable the auto-update option on Epic Games Launcher so the patches can start downloading once it’s available.
Servers will remain unavailable for a few hours even after you download the patch on account of maintenance. We expect the servers to be back up by 7am CT.
Be ready to face longer load and queue times after the servers go back up, especially if you are hopping into the game immediately. With season three just starting, almost every player would want to get their hands on the new battle pass and try out the revamped Island. A server bottleneck isn’t really surprising at this point, so patience is key.