Rocket Racing is a free to play “supersonic arcade racer” developed by Psyonix (the studio behind Rocket League) and published by Epic Games as a permanent game mode inside Fortnite, built on Unreal Engine 5. It was revealed at Fortnite’s record breaking “The Big Bang” live event on December 2, 2023[1] and launched on December 8, 2023 as one of three “games within Fortnite,” alongside LEGO Fortnite (Dec 7) and Fortnite Festival (Dec 9). [2][3]
The core fantasy: rocket powered Fortnite cars that drift, fly, boost, air dodge, and drive on walls and ceilings through tracks raced by up to 12 players; launched with 26 tracks across Novice/Advanced/Expert difficulty and an 8-tier ranked ladder (Bronze → Unreal)[4]. It shares its car cosmetic DNA with Rocket League: bodies like the Octane sync across both games via your Epic account.
The mode hit a 625,683-concurrent launch peak, opened a promising UEFN creator ecosystem in March 2024, was deprioritized by October 2024, and got its shutdown anouncement in March 2026 while averaging under 1,000 concurrent players.
Quick links: Official launch announcement · Wikipedia · Fortnite Wiki hub · UEFN RR docs · speedrun.com board · Official track Discover page
https://variety.com/2023/gaming/news/fortnite-big-bang-event-eminem-lego-rocket-racing-festival-1235832834/ (Variety) ↩︎
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/introducing-lego-fortnite-rocket-racing-and-fortnite-festival-new-epic-games-launching-this-week-in-fortnite (Epic launch post, Epic Games) ↩︎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Racing (Wikipedia) ↩︎
https://www.fortnite.com/news/race-without-limits-with-rocket-racing-in-fortnite?lang=en-US (launch post, Epic Games / fortnite.com) ↩︎