Data Desk Fortnite · FNCS 2026 Major 2 · Island Analysis
The storm had a favorite: all 24 FNCS Major 2 endgames, mapped
The ELITE data desk pulled every zone from Epic's tournament replays — 264 storm circles across 24 Grand Finals games. The picture is lopsided: The Battlewoods was the nearest major POI to 9 of 24 endgames, one spot near it sat inside 6 zone-5s, and more than half the island never hosted an endgame at all. Here is the whole island, audited.
The short version
Across all 24 Grand Finals games (Aug 1–2, 12 NAC + 12 EU), the storm played favorites: The Battlewoods was the nearest major POI to 9 of 24 endgames, and one spot near it sat inside 6 of 24 zone-5 circles. Meanwhile 55% of the island never hosted an endgame at all — and the zone clock itself is pure script: an identical 11-phase ladder in every single game. Full event stats live in the Grand Finals dashboard.
9/24
6/24
55%
1.40 km
24/24
264
Endgame address book — nearest major POI, all 24 zone-5s
Every zone of the weekend
Start with everything at once: 264 storm circles — 11 phases in each of the 24 games, both regions, both days — stacked on one map. The early rings blanket the island, which is why bad drops feel survivable in phase 1. The story is in what happens next: as the ladder tightens, the rings stop being evenly distributed and start piling onto the same handful of addresses. Fifty duos per region planned 12 games each around this funnel, and the rest of this piece pulls it apart layer by layer.
The heat
Filter to zone-5 only — the circle that decides who plays endgame from height and who plays it from storm — and the island gets a hot core. The single hottest cell sits near The Battlewoods: one point on the map was inside 6 of the 24 zone-5s. Read that competitively: a team pre-positioned there was standing inside the final arena for a quarter of every endgame played all weekend, before rotating a meter. Endgame position is mostly bought early — with mats, health, and time — and the teams holding ground near the hot core paid the least for it.
The map Epic forgot
Invert the heat map and the bigger number appears: 55% of the island's land never sat inside any zone-5 all weekend. Seven of the 13 major POIs — Cluster Coast, WonkeeLand, Latte Landing, Sunken Shores, Golden Grove, Chopped Shop and Lifty Lodge — were never inside an endgame circle even once. One phrasing note, because the two stats measure different things: the address book above asks which POI was nearest to each endgame; this one asks whether the POI itself ever sat inside a circle. A POI can be the closest landmark to an endgame that settles in the fields beside it without ever being in the arena.
The competitive translation is blunt. If your home POI is one of those seven, every single game ends somewhere else — you are commuting 12 times out of 12, and the commute is paid in mats, surge damage windows and third-party exposure.
The endgame address book
Attribute each of the 24 zone-5s to its nearest major POI and the concentration is stark: The Battlewoods 9, Frosted Flats 4, Sinister Strip 4, Heatwave Harbor 3 — four addresses account for 20 of 24 endgames. Endgame at this Major was a neighborhood, not a lottery. That is exactly why the best duos scout zone tendencies between sessions: knowing the neighborhood turns a 50-50 rotation call in phase 6 into a plan made in the lobby.
The rotation tax
Now price it. For every major POI we measured the straight-line distance from the POI to the zone-5 center, averaged over all 24 games — call it the rotation tax. The most expensive home on the island was Cluster Coast at 1.40 km per game (1.26 km in NAC lobbies, 1.54 km in EU). The cheapest was The Battlewoods at 0.56 km — the storm charged Cluster Coast residents two and a half times the commute, every game, all weekend.
The movement data says the tax is real. Winning teams covered 4.55 km per game against 2.31 km for teams placing 26th–50th — but per minute alive, winners actually moved about 10% slower (216 vs 240 m/min in NAC). Winners out-live, they don't out-sprint: the extra distance comes from being alive for the late phases, not from panic rotations. The kilometers you choose at the drop screen are the only ones fully under your control — which is exactly the math our free ELITE drops map models: pick a drop, see what the circle usually charges you for it.
Argue the zone pulls with people who watched all 24.
Drop debates, FNCS watch parties, and the data desk answering questions.
The bus never lied
One excuse the data retires: the bus. Draw all 24 flight lines and the coverage is honest — every POI on the island was overflown, and the 24 headings covered all 8 sectors of the compass. Over a 12-game session the bus evens out; nobody's POI was systematically stranded. Which is why serious duos plan for the worst-case bus, not the friendly one: a drop you can only reach on a good flight path is a drop you don't actually own. The winners' ledger backs it — duos re-dropped the same POI game after game regardless of where the bus came from.
Zone script on rails
Time to bury a piece of lobby folklore: "zone pacing RNG." There is none. All 24 Grand Finals games ran the identical 11-phase radius ladder, and the lock-to-lock gaps between phases matched to within 0.1 seconds across every game we parsed. The storm's clock is a metronome; only its position is a dice roll.
That matters because it makes timing fully rehearsable. Every duo in the lobby has the same countdown in every game — when to force the frag, when refreshes stop being worth it, when the last safe rotate window closes. If a lock caught you, the schedule didn't change on you. Your read did.
NAC vs EU zone luck
Same island, same script — completely different draws. Put all 24 zone-5s on one map and the regions separate on sight: NAC's zones stacked near the dead center of the island, while EU's scattered island-wide. Twelve games is a small sample and nobody chose this, but the duos still had to pay for it.
The bill shows up in the storm-tax ledger — meters caught outside each freshly locked zone from phase 3 on, summed. The weekend's cursed duo was EU's GodL Flickzy + GodL Chap at 1,052 m per game, 12.6 km of storm commuting across their 12 games. The blessed end was NAC's CVX 2XBellyBoss + DIG OliverOG at 42 m per game — a 25x gap in luck alone. The single worst moment belonged to WBOTY Webster, caught 1,341 m outside when zone 4 locked in NAC Game 4. And fitting the scatter, 4 of the 5 most-taxed duos of the weekend were EU. For the full cross-region ledger — frags, damage, steals and all — read the NAC vs EU region war.
How we measured this
Everything above is parsed from Epic's public server-side tournament replays for all 24 Grand Finals games: zone centers, radii and lock timings from the replay zone telemetry, distances from player movement traces, fights from the kill feed, and damage from a replay-derived model. Players are tracked by account id because display names change mid-event. Kill-feed ordering is reliable but carries no clock times. As a calibration check, series points computed from our parse were verified against Epic's official leaderboard and matched for all 100 duos.
FAQ
Where did zones go at the FNCS 2026 Major 2 Grand Finals?
Across all 24 games (12 NAC + 12 EU), The Battlewoods was the nearest major POI to 9 of 24 endgame (zone-5) circles. Frosted Flats and Sinister Strip anchored 4 endgames each and Heatwave Harbor 3 — four addresses account for 20 of the 24 endgames, while 55% of the island's land never sat inside any zone-5 all weekend.
Is zone pacing random in competitive Fortnite?
No. All 24 Grand Finals games ran an identical 11-phase radius ladder, and lock-to-lock gaps matched to within 0.1 seconds across every game. The only randomness is where each circle pulls — never when it moves or how fast it shrinks.
What was the best landing spot at the FNCS Major 2 Grand Finals?
Purely by rotation cost, The Battlewoods: its average straight-line distance to the zone-5 center was 0.56 km, the cheapest of any major POI, and it was the nearest POI to 9 of 24 endgames. Cluster Coast was the most expensive home at 1.40 km per game. Contest level and loot still matter, but the storm's bill was 2.5x smaller at Battlewoods.
Which POIs never hosted an endgame at FNCS Major 2?
Seven of the island's 13 major POIs were never inside a zone-5 all weekend: Cluster Coast, WonkeeLand, Latte Landing, Sunken Shores, Golden Grove, Chopped Shop, and Lifty Lodge. A POI can still be the nearest landmark to an endgame that settles beside it without ever sitting inside the circle itself.
Do NAC and EU get the same zones in FNCS?
No — each region's 12 games drew their own zones, and the draws looked nothing alike. NAC's zone-5s stacked near the dead center of the island while EU's scattered island-wide, and it showed in the storm-tax ledger: 4 of the 5 most storm-taxed duos of the weekend were EU.
How were these FNCS zone stats measured?
Every circle center, radius, and lock timing was read from the zone telemetry in Epic's public server-side tournament replays for all 24 Grand Finals games, alongside player movement traces. Computed series points from the same parse were verified against Epic's official leaderboard and matched for all 100 duos.
The zone report drops in Discord first.
Next Major, the maps and the rotation math land in the server before they land here.