NEW YORK — Fortnite servers went offline Thursday, May 14, 2026, as Epic Games conducted planned maintenance for the v40.40 update, temporarily disrupting login, matchmaking and gameplay for millions of players worldwide across all platforms.

The scheduled downtime began at 4 a.m. ET (8 a.m. UTC), with matchmaking disabled 30 minutes earlier. Epic Games confirmed the maintenance window would last approximately 90 minutes to two hours, with full services expected to return by 6 a.m. ET (10 a.m. UTC). The update focuses on Chapter 7 Season 2 content, including the highly anticipated Overwatch collaboration featuring new heroes, weapons and landmarks.

Epic Games' public status page clearly listed the downtime for v40.40, noting that players would be unable to access Battle Royale, Zero Build, Reload, Fortnite OG and LEGO Fortnite modes during the maintenance period. The company advised players to keep their game clients updated so the new patch could download automatically once servers came back online.

Downdetector and other outage-tracking sites showed a moderate spike in user reports concentrated in the early morning hours, primarily from North America and Europe. Most complaints involved........

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