Fortnite's next big tournament is the Winter Royale, it has a $1 million prize pool, and it starts this weekend

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The Fortnite Winter Royale preps you and Epic for the Fortnite World Cup 2019

Fortnite's giving players the chance to win $1,000,000 of icy cold cash in its Winter Royale Open Fortnite competition, and qualifying for a spot in the tournament will be relatively easy. Ok, maybe not easy, but definitely more convenient as Epic Games brings Fortnite's in-game tournament system back around for its biggest test yet.

Epic will host the Winter Royale Qualifiers on Saturday and Sunday this week. The qualifiers will give you several different chances to rack up a high score, and whichever one is your best performance will be the one that counts for potential placement in the Winter Royale Finals. Epic is keeping rules specifics for the qualifiers to itself for the moment, though it did say they will use the same settings as whatever Pop-Up Cup - basically a new, formalized version of Competitive LTMs - is active at the moment.

In other words, you should be able to practice in an environment that's competitive but not quite as stressful in the Pop-Up Cup, then head on over to the Winter Royale Qualifiers when you're ready for showtime. Whoever racks up the best qualifying scores in the European region will advance to the Europe Winter Royale Finals on November 30 and December 1, and whoever does the best in North America will face off on December 11 and 12. You can always check the schedule in the Events tab in-game for a reminder of the dates.

An international tournament with a $1,000,000 prize pool sounds like a pretty big deal, sure, but the Winter Royale is largely a practice run for the esports-travangaza that will be Fortnite World Cup next year. So you'd better polish up that pickaxe and get practicing.

Have some catching up to do before you're read for the majors? Don't sweat it - just read our guide on how to play Fortnite. 

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.