Fortnite Discover Thumbnails Lock Before October 22 - 2026
Fortnite Discover thumbnails stop being optional on October 22, 2026. The v42.40 release notes say portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails, and logos will be required to publish or update an island. Today is October 17. That is five days, including a weekend, before a hotfix can stall on missing art.
The same notes introduce four new asset types so islands fit a Discover redesign that players started seeing on October 15. The redesign is phased. The upload rule is a date. Do not wait until your slice of players sees the new tiles before you upload the files.
This page is the lock checklist. It is not the Fab source-asset change from the same morning. A licensed environment does not draw these images. The finished-island refusal covers that mistake. Pixel sizes and safe areas belong in Epic’s Making Thumbnails and Videos guide, linked from Promoting Your Fortnite Island. This checklist names the files the release notes require. It does not invent dimensions the notes do not print.
Why this matters now
Discover is where players find Epic islands and creator islands, save favorites, or type an island code. The Discover UI page is that definition. v42.40 says the tiles are becoming more expressive. Autoplay video, a cleaner logo treatment, and new tile shapes roll out to more players over time, starting October 15.
The business consequence is narrower than the art direction. After October 22, publish and update both demand portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails, and logos. An island that is already live can keep running. The next publish, including a balance pass you meant to ship on October 23, is the action that hits the rule. Teams that only publish on crisis day will meet the rule then, with no art lead online.
Direct answer: Before October 22, have a portrait with art and logo in one flat image, a portrait that is art only, an art-only landscape, and a transparent island-name logo uploaded for every island you might publish or update. Treat the gameplay video as the fifth file the notes introduce for the details page, and do not confuse it with the sentence that names the date.
Who this is for
| Reader | Use the lock for… |
|---|---|
| Beginners | A file list you can hand to a friend who draws |
| Developers | Knowing which Creator Portal action starts failing without the files |
| Creators | A devlog that tells players why the tile looks different, without promising every region flipped on October 15 |
| Companies | A dated gate in front of revenue, not a mood board |
Time: one sitting to inventory what you already uploaded, and whatever your art path needs to fill the holes. The inventory itself is under an hour if someone already knows the portal. Drawing four finals is the long part. Start that on October 17, not on October 22 at 11 p.m.
Prerequisites: access to the island’s publishing flow, and a person who can export a transparent logo. You do not need a new Verse API. You do not need a Fab purchase. The Verse guide is for scripting. It will not draw the tile.
What the notes actually require
Read the two sentences separately. They are both in the Discover section of v42.40, and they are not the same list.
New asset types the update introduces
| # | File | What the notes say |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gameplay video | For your island details page |
| 2 | Portrait A | Art and logo in one flat image |
| 3 | Portrait B | Art only |
| 4 | Landscape | Art only |
| 5 | Logo | Transparent island name |
The notes call these four new asset types and then describe the portraits as two files. Count files, not the word “four,” when you brief an artist. Two portraits plus one landscape plus one logo is four stills. The video is additional.
The dated requirement
Starting October 22, portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails, and logos are required to publish or update an island. The sentence’s purpose is so every island can use the redesigned Discover surfaces.
The dated sentence does not say “gameplay video is required on October 22.” The video is part of the new set, and the redesign mentions autoplay video. Plan the video if you want the details page and the autoplay treatment. Do not tell your producer the notes made the video a hard publish block on that date unless a later Epic page says so. Recheck the notes the morning you publish. Beta docs move. This split is what they said on October 15.
Specs, safe areas, and per-tile guidance are delegated to Making Thumbnails and Videos. Open that page from the release notes or from the promoting guide before you export. Do not scale an old 16:9 capture and hope the new tile shapes crop it kindly. The notes say the tiles and modules will use new shapes. A landscape that was “good enough” in September can clip a logo that you also baked into the art. That is why one portrait is art-plus-logo as a single flat image and the other portrait is art only. The logo file is separate and transparent so the cleaner logo treatment can place the name itself.
What “publish or update” covers
The requirement is not “new islands only.” Update is in the sentence. A live island with last season’s single thumbnail still needs the new set before the next submission.
Treat these as updates until Epic says otherwise.
- A gameplay patch
- A Verse fix you need live the same day
- A new device or weapon list
- An age-rating retake, if the portal ties that retake to a publish
- A title or description change if your portal flow publishes them with the island
If you are unsure whether a click counts as an update, assume it does and have the files ready. The cost of an extra export is smaller than a blocked Friday patch. v42.40 also moved the IARC questionnaire into the Creator Portal, completed when you publish and before moderation. Ratings still show on the Ratings tab. If an update changes your answers, you retake the questionnaire for that version. A thumbnail lock and a questionnaire retake can land on the same submission. Do not discover both at once.
Islands you do not intend to touch after October 22 are not forced through the art pipeline by the sentence as written. The moment you need to ship a fix, they are. Inventory dormant islands that still earn, and either freeze them on purpose or make the files now. “We will grab a screenshot if it breaks” is how October 22 becomes a content outage.
The player-facing redesign is not the upload date
Players began seeing the redesigned Discover on October 15. Epic says this is phased and will reach more players over time. Your cousin might already see autoplay and new tile shapes. Your other cousin might still see the previous Discover. Both can be true.
Your upload date does not follow your cousin. October 22 is the creator-side rule in the notes. Uploading early does not force every player onto the new layout overnight. Waiting for “everyone to have the new Discover” before you export guarantees you miss the creator date.
Say this in a devlog if the tile looks different for some players and not others. Discover’s new layout is rolling out in phases after the October 15 update. Our island still needs the new thumbnail set before we can publish again on October 22. Do not say the entire player base flipped on October 15. The notes forbid that sentence.
A lock list you can paste into a ticket
Copy this into the island’s task. One row per island code you might update. “Done” means the file is uploaded in the publishing flow, not that it exists in a Discord pin.
| ID | Asset | Done when | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| D1 | Portrait, art and logo, one flat image | Uploaded | |
| D2 | Portrait, art only, no logo baked in | Uploaded | |
| D3 | Landscape, art only | Uploaded | |
| D4 | Island-name logo, transparent | Uploaded | |
| D5 | Gameplay video for the details page | Uploaded, or explicitly deferred with a reread of the notes | |
| D6 | Making Thumbnails and Videos opened, exports match its safe areas | Yes, with the date you opened it | |
| D7 | Next planned publish date | Before or after October 22, written down | |
| D8 | IARC answers still true for that publish | Yes, or a retake is scheduled |
Pass: D1 through D4 and D6 are done before D7, and D7 is on or after October 22. If D7 is before October 22 and the portal still accepts the old set, ship the gameplay fix, then finish D1 through D4 before the following update. Do not spend the last pre-deadline day on a cosmetic if a real break is unfixed. Do not spend October 23 on a cosmetic either, if the files are missing. The files are the cosmetic that unblocks everything else.
Fail: D2 is a crop of D1, so the “art only” portrait still has the wordmark. The notes split those two files for a reason. The cleaner logo treatment needs art that is not already stamped. Fail: D4 is a JPEG with a white rectangle behind the name. Transparent means the tile can show through. Fail: D3 is a phone screenshot of the editor with the UEFN chrome in frame. That is not island art.
D5 stays a conscious deferral, not a blank. Write “deferred” or “uploaded.” A blank video row becomes a surprise when someone treats every new type as part of the dated sentence.
What to draw, without inventing a spec sheet
The release notes tell you the job of each file. Epic’s thumbnail guide tells you the frame. Use both. Here is the job, which you can brief tonight.
Portrait with art and logo, flat. One image. The name is in the picture, not a separate layer someone else will add. Flat means you are not counting on a live text overlay to save a muddy title. Use this when the tile shows a single combined image. Keep the name inside the area the thumbnail guide calls safe. If you have not opened that guide, you are guessing.
Portrait, art only. The same kind of scene, or a tighter crop, with no wordmark. This is the file that lets Discover’s logo treatment place the transparent logo itself. If your only portrait has the title painted on, you do not have this file. Paint a second export.
Landscape, art only. A wide frame of the island, again without a baked title. New tile shapes will crop. Put the readable subject near the center until the safe-area page says otherwise. A landscape that only works if nobody crops the corners will fail the new modules.
Transparent island-name logo. The name as a graphic with a real alpha channel. Not a screenshot of text on the skybox. Not the portrait with the corners erased by hand in a hurry. Test it on both a light and a dark background before upload. The cleaner logo treatment has nothing to clean if the “transparent” file is a solid plate.
Gameplay video. A clip for the island details page, and the kind of motion the autoplay tiles want. Capture it from a player camera, not from the editor viewport with transform gizmos. The promoting guide also points at replays as a way to set up shots. Use a replay if your best moment is hard to stage live. Keep the clip honest. Autoplay of a menu you cannot reach in the first minute is how Discover tiles train players not to trust you.
Open Making Thumbnails and Videos before the export, then write the pixel sizes you saw into the ticket. Those numbers should come from Epic’s page the day you export. They should not come from a blog that did not print them.
A five-day calendar from October 17
| Day | Outcome |
|---|---|
| October 17 | Inventory every island you might update in the next month. Mark which of D1–D4 already exist |
| October 18 | Art only files first (D2 and D3). They are the ones teams fake by cropping a titled image |
| October 19 | Combined portrait (D1) and transparent logo (D4). Check the logo on two backgrounds |
| October 20 | Upload into the portal. Open the thumbnail guide and fix any safe-area miss the same day |
| October 21 | Buffer. Record the gameplay video only if D1–D4 are uploaded. Reread the October 22 sentence in v42.40 |
| October 22 | Requirement is on. Do not schedule your first upload for this date |
If October 18 is the only day your artist has, swap nothing except the video. Stills block the dated sentence. Video is the file you may defer after you reread the notes. A team of one can still follow the order. The order is the point. Combined poster art is what people like drawing, and it does not satisfy the art-only rows.
What does not count as the lock
A Fab listing image is the seller’s marketing. The source-asset what-changed piece is about editable systems you license. Those systems do not export Discover tiles. A bowling-alley pack can be in the project and the portal can still lack D1 through D4.
An in-game screenshot with the default HUD is a start for the art-only landscape only after you remove the HUD, the editor, and any title you pasted on top. A Discord emoji is not a transparent island logo. A YouTube thumbnail at a random aspect ratio is not a portrait pair.
The island code, a favorite button, and a creator’s social post are how players reach you after they see a tile. They are not the tile. Promoting Your Fortnite Island lists trailers, replays, lobby backgrounds, and a Discord bot as further promotion. Useful the week after the files are in. Useless as a substitute for the October 22 set.
Verse you write in the UEFN scripting resources can make a better gameplay clip. It cannot upload the logo. Split the tasks. The person who owns text_channel or a custom ability is not automatically the person who exports a PNG with alpha.
Money, in plain terms
Discover is a distribution surface. If players cannot parse the tile, they do not enter, and island payouts do not start. The October 22 rule is stricter than “ugly tiles earn less.” Missing portraits, landscape, or logo can block the publish that would have shipped the mode you expect to earn.
That is why this sits with making-money work even though the task is art direction. A weekend event you planned to turn on October 24 needs the files on October 21. The event’s Verse can be perfect and still sit in an unpublished project. Write the publish date next to the art owner. If they are the same person, the calendar above is the whole studio.
Do not buy a source asset to solve this. Do not commission a single poster and call it four files. Pay for four stills and a transparent name, or make them yourself using the safe areas Epic publishes. The gameplay video is the optional spend until you confirm the notes still leave it off the dated sentence.
Company checklist
| Question | Answer from v42.40 |
|---|---|
| What date blocks publish and update? | October 22, 2026 |
| Which files does that sentence name? | Portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails, and logos |
| How many portraits? | Two. One flat image with art and logo. One art only |
| Is the logo a separate file? | Yes. A transparent island-name logo |
| Is the video in that dated sentence? | No. It is a new details-page asset. Recheck before you skip it |
| Did every player get the new Discover on October 15? | No. The redesign is phased |
| Does a Fab pack include these uploads? | No |
| Where are pixel specs? | Making Thumbnails and Videos, linked from the notes and the promoting guide |
One owner uploads. A second person opens the portal and confirms four stills are present, not four copies of the same JPEG. Store the source files in the project repo with the island code in the filename. A desktop folder called final_final is how October 21 starts from zero.
If you miss the date
You can still run the island that is already public, as far as the notes go. You cannot treat the next update as a normal click. The recovery is the same list. Make D1 through D4, upload them, then publish the gameplay change in a second step if the portal allows art first. If it requires them on the same submission, you wait until the art is actually in that submission. Do not upload a white image to “unblock” and replace it later unless you are willing to be the tile players screenshot.
Tell support and your Discord the truth if a promised update slips. The Discover art requirement started October 22, and the update waits on those files. Do not blame Verse, Fab, or moderation for a missing PNG.
Then put the files in the ticket template for the next island so this is a one-time miss. The redesign is not going back to a single untitled screenshot.
Key takeaways
- On October 22, 2026, portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails, and logos are required to publish or update a Fortnite island.
- v42.40 introduces a gameplay video, two portraits, an art-only landscape, and a transparent island-name logo. Count the stills as four files plus a video.
- One portrait is art and logo in a single flat image. The other portrait is art only. They are not two crops of a titled poster.
- The dated sentence does not name the gameplay video. Ship the stills first, and reread the notes before you skip the video.
- The player-facing Discover redesign started October 15 and is phased. The creator upload rule is not phased.
- Specs and safe areas are in Making Thumbnails and Videos, linked from the release notes and the promoting guide. Do not invent pixel sizes.
- A Fab source asset, a HUD screenshot, and a social thumbnail do not satisfy the lock.
- IARC still sits in the Creator Portal on publish. A content change can mean a questionnaire retake on the same submission as the new art.
- Inventory every island you might update. Dormant projects become blocked the day you need a fix.
- Put an owner and an upload date on D1 through D4 before October 21. October 22 is a buffer only if the files are already in.
FAQ
When do Fortnite Discover thumbnails become required?
October 22, 2026. The v42.40 notes say portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails, and logos are required to publish or update an island starting that day.
What files do I need before that date?
A portrait with art and logo in one flat image, a second portrait that is art only, an art-only landscape, and a transparent logo of the island name. Also plan a gameplay video for the details page. Confirm the video against the notes before you treat it as optional.
Does this hit islands that are already live?
It hits the next publish or update. An island can stay up without a new submission. A patch after October 22 needs the files.
Will every player see the new Discover tiles on October 15?
No. Epic says the redesign is phased and reaches more players over time. Autoplay video, a cleaner logo, and new tile shapes are the direction. Your upload deadline does not wait for that rollout to finish.
Where are the exact pixel sizes?
In Epic’s Making Thumbnails and Videos guidance, linked from the v42.40 notes and from Promoting Your Fortnite Island. Open that page on export day and follow it. This checklist names the required kinds of files. It does not replace those measurements.
Can I use a Fab screenshot or my old YouTube thumbnail?
Not as the finished set. You need the specific portraits, the art-only landscape, and a transparent name logo. A single reused poster will fail the art-only rows and the transparency check.
What if I only have time for one export?
Make the art-only portrait and the art-only landscape before you polish a titled poster. Then the transparent logo. The combined flat portrait still has to exist before October 22 if you need to publish. One file does not close the requirement.
Is this the same change as UEFN source assets on Fab?
No. Source assets are editable systems you license into a project. Discover thumbnails are images and a logo you upload so the island can be published and shown on the new tiles. Same release notes, different work.
What to do next
Open v42.40, then Making Thumbnails and Videos, and write today’s pixel rules into the ticket. Inventory D1 through D4 for every island you might update in October.
Upload before October 21 if a publish is possible on or after the 22nd. Leave the gameplay video as an explicit yes or a reread, not as a blank. Tell the person with the publish button that a missing logo is now a ship blocker, not a branding nicety.
Bookmark the file table. The next island should not relearn this on a deadline weekend.