FNCS Global Championship
The FNCS Global Championship, also known as the Fortnite Global Championship, or simply Globals, is an annual Fortnite Battle Royale LAN tournament. Regarded as the largest recurring Fortnite tournament today, its champions are considered both FNCS winners and world champions. Since the first tournament in 2023, three FNCS Global Championships have been held. Team size has varied by year, following the competitive format; the 2023 and 2024 tournaments were held in duos, the 2025 in trios, and the upcoming 2026 will be held in duos.
Usually, players qualify to the FNCS Global Championship through a high placement on any of the three Major FNCS tournaments preceding the championship, with certain regions awarding more qualification spots than others. Exceptions include an additional "Last Chance Major" ahead of the 2023 Globals, and the "Major 1 Summit" replacing Major 1 in terms of qualifying players for the upcoming 2026 Globals.
Background
Prior to the FNCS Global Championships, Epic Games organized multiple LAN tournaments, most notably the Fortnite World Cup and the FNCS Invitational 2022. Since the Fortnite World Cup, Epic Games also host FNCS tournaments seasonally.Tournaments
2023
Overview
The 2023 FNCS Global Championship was held between October 13–15, 2023 in the Royal Arena, Copenhagen, Denmark and was played in duos, featuring a $4,000,000 prize pool. Eventual winning duo Cooper 'Cooper' Smith and Matthew 'Mero' Faitel formed in April 2023 after the latter had initially retired but decided to let a coin toss decide if he would play with the former; the coin toss went in Smith's favour. The duo qualified to the Global Championship through a second place finish in FNCS Major 2. At the Global Championship, the duo ended up qualifying for the Grand Finals, despite having been relegated to the Lower Bracket on day one. They then won the grand finals with 330 points and the most total eliminations of any duo, albeit without any Victory Royales. Besides sharing $1,000,000 in prize money, Smith and Faitel were awarded a trophy made by Swarovski featuring the FNCS logo. Polish duo Michał 'Kami' Kamiński and Iwo 'Setty' Zając were often regarded as favorites ahead of the tournament, having won the previous year's FNCS Invitational LAN, but they finished as runners up with 271 points.In the day one Upper Bracket, Japanese duo Nomura 'Pepoclip' Yuma and Yamada 'Zagou' Yuto notably circumvented the storm surge mechanic – a mechanic punishing the duos that have dealt the least amount of damage to others – by healing a knocked opponent and damaging him, accruing damage to avoid storm surge, and eventually qualifying to the Grand Finals.
Being a global LAN, the tournament featured a rivalry between Europe and North America. Though the winners were North American, nine Victory Royales were achieved by European duos across the tournament, compared to five by North American duos.
The tournament was the most-watched Fortnite tournament since the World Cup in terms of peak viewership, reaching over 720,000 viewers.
Qualification
Qualification took place in FNCS Majors 1–3 2023, as well as in the FNCS Last Chance Major. Between Majors 1 and 2, the regions North America East and North America West were combined into North America Central. Thus, duos qualified to the Global Championship through all three North American regions.| Europe | North America East | North America Central | North America West | Brazil | Asia | Middle East | Oceania | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Major 1 |  Team changesRussian players Egor 'SwizzY' Luciko, Daniil 'Putrick' Abdrakhmanov, NeFrizi, Vladislav 'Howly' Korobkin and Alexander 'fiR3hUNTER' Vysotsky were disqualified before the event due to the Russo-Ukrainian war. The qualification spots belonging to Luciko & Abdrakhmanov and NeFrizi & Korobkin were rolled down to Charyy & Artur 'G13ras' Gierasimowicz and Lukas 'Cheatiin' Luhn & Wilmer 'Pixie' Juriander, respectively. Other Russian players such as Danila 'Malibuca' Iakovenko were allowed to play because of qualifying outside of Russia. Cl4x couldn't obtain a visa to compete at the event. Cl4x and Vysotsky's respective teammates – kirb1 and Jack 'Wickesy' Withers – played the tournament together.At the event, Oceanian Major 3 winners Morgan 'RepulseGod' Bamford and Jace were disqualified from the event due to another player having qualified on Bamford's account. Logan 'Bucke' Eschenburg got disqualified for violating the tournament's, reportedly specifically for smoking and drinking while streaming at the tournament, which wasn't allowed. Thus, Eschenburg's teammate Arnel 'Okis' Avdagic played the tournament alone. FormatThe tournament began with the Upper Bracket session on October 13 featuring all teams 49 qualified from the regular FNCS tournaments. The top 25 teams from the Upper Bracket qualified to the Grand Finals, while the remaining 24 competed against the teams qualified from the Last Chance Major in the Lower Bracket on October 14 for the remaining 25 Grand Finals spots. The Grand Finals took place on October 15. The Upper and Lower Brackets featured five matches each, and the Grand Finals featured six.Teams were awarded points for outliving opposing teams, eliminating them, and completing in-game objectives as follows:
Rules for classification: 1) Points; 2) Total victory royales; 3) Average eliminations in the session; 4) Average placement in the session; 5) Total seconds survived in across all matches Source: Leaderboards
Source: Sources: Top eliminations
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