Fortnite Winterfest 2025 (the current Winterfest season rolling into 2026) started on December 18, 2025.

Quick answer

  • The latest Fortnite Winterfest began on December 18, 2025 , according to multiple event trackers and community wikis.
  • This Winterfest 2025 event is scheduled to run until early January 2026 (January 5 or January 7 depending on source and region wording).

A bit of context

  • One detailed event guide notes that “Fortnite Winterfest 2025 launches on December 18,” framing it as the official kickoff of the current holiday event.
  • A Fortnite community wiki entry for Winterfest 2025 states that it “began on December 18th 2025 and will conclude on January 5th 2026,” clarifying both the start and end window.

Why people ask “when did Winterfest start?”

  • Many players ask “when did Fortnite Winterfest start” to check how many days of free daily presents or challenges they might have missed during the current event window.
  • With collaborations (Harry Potter, Hatsune Miku, Sabrina Carpenter and more) spread over multiple days, knowing the December 18, 2025 start date helps track which cosmetics dropped when.

Historical note

  • Winterfest as a named event first appeared back in 2019 , with Epic’s official “Winterfest 2019 begins” news post marking the original kickoff of the Winterfest branding.
  • Since then, the December window has become the traditional time for Winterfest to start, which the December 18, 2025 date continues.

TL;DR: If you’re asking “when did Fortnite Winterfest start” about the current one, the answer is December 18, 2025. Expect it to keep running into early January 2026, so there’s still time to grab rewards if you’re logging in during the tail end of the event.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.