Fortnite 18.40 Countdown: Server Downtime Ends, Updates, & More


Update day is the best kind of day, right? Fortnite's version 18.40 Update has been released and there's a lot of new information to look over. It looks like Chapter 3 is starting soon - sorry, Season 9 - as the leaks are very telling. Here's everything you need to know...

SERVER DOWNTIME - It's over right now

Fortnite 18.40 has officially started - Naruto and his pals are in the Item Store and there's a lot of changes coming.

The BRUTE Mech is set to make an appearance in this update, as it's currently a part of Chimpanski's Community Voting Boards. There's a new Mythic Kunai weapon, tying into the Naruto Collaboration. The Convergence is becoming a Cube Pyramid and The End is nigh. The next month is going to be huge...

Downtime for 18.40 begins...

It looks like Fortnite's servers are down for the 18.40 update at the moment. We don't have an exact duration, but these can last several hours if we're unlucky - we'll keep an eye out but expect data miners to be hard at work uncovering in-game files already.

Fortnite Status is what you need to keep an eye on - although they can be a bit late in telling us the server downtime is over.

LATEST - Naruto Collab Trailer inbound

Fortnite's Naruto collaboration has been a long-rumoured addition to Epic Games' battle royale and it looks like we're finally getting Naruto alongside Kakashi, Sasuke, and Sakura.

As you can see below, a YouTube Premiere has been set up at the same time as when we're expecting Update 18.40 to drop - which is very interesting. The trailer is due to be released at the following times:

  • 01:00 November 16th PST
  • 04:00 November 16th EST
  • 09:00 November 16th GMT

Expect to learn more about the extent of this collaboration soon.

Fortnite Update 18.40 Release Date & Time

Fortnite Update 18.40 will release on Tuesday, 16 November. As it is a major update, there will be some server downtime alongside it. Servers will go down at 09:00 GMT / 04:00 EST / 01:00 PST with matchmaking being disabled 30 minutes prior to this.

Servers will be down for at least an hour and remain that way for up to three hours depending on the size of the update. The file size of the update shouldn't be too large, even for an important update. We expect it to be around 3-6GB across all platforms.

Event Files Incoming?

One thing that we will be looking out for in this update is some event files. With 18.40 being the final Fortnite update of the season, we're expecting the end of season event to be revealed in some capacity soon.

Fortnite events end of season
click to enlarge
Operation Sky Fire was the finale to Season 7

If Chapter 3 is truly what's next in the game then the end of season event will be one that is truly unforgettable. We don't expect to hear anything official about it until around a week before it's set to take place. If the event files are uploaded in this update, we could learn something a lot sooner than this.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Fortnite and More page.