Fortnite mobile still not available in UK despite return to US App Store

The long road towards getting Fortnite back onto the UK iOS and Android app stores continues, even though it’s back in the US.

It’s taken five years, a costly legal battle, and several court orders, but Fortnite is finally available again in the US App Store, meaning that American fans can now play it on iPhone and iPad.

According to publisher Epic Games it should turn up on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the EU today as well, but unfortunately none of that seems to be helping its availability in the UK.

Epic hasn’t been specific about anywhere else, but as of right now the mobile version of the game isn’t available in the iOS App Store or Android’s Google Play in the UK. And it’s not clear when that’s going to change.

The game’s absence began in 2020, when Epic purposefully broke Apple’s rules about fees for in-app purchases, knowing that it would get them thrown off the store. This led to a five year legal battle which seemed to end in a stalemate, but which this year saw a US judge instruct Apple to stop trying to take a cut of payments.

This immediately led to Epic announcing that Fortnite would be making a return, but its initial attempts to do so were blocked by Apple.

Apple was told to stop doing this, by a US judge, and so on Tuesday the game finally returned to US App Stores, complete with the ability to buy cosmetics and other in-app purchases directly from Epic.

That means more money for Epic, as they won’t now be giving 27% of every payment to Apple, but it makes little difference to players, other than there are some good deals at the moment to incentivise them into using the Epic store.

Fortnite is BACK on the App Store in the U.S. on iPhones and iPads… and on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the E.U! It’ll show up in Search soon! Get Fortnite on the App Store in the U.S. ➡️ https://t.co/HQu3pYCXFm Fortnite (@Fortnite) May 20, 2025

As you might gather from all this, Fortnite mobile is not actually a very large proportion of the overall audience, or otherwise Epic Games wouldn’t have allowed it to sit the last five years out.

Instead, they embarked on a bizarre marketing campaign, using Orwellian imagery and trying to paint Apple as a restrictive tyrant.

Really, the only problem was that Epic didn’t like having to give Apple money, in what is a fairly standard licensing arrangement similar to how Steam and video game consoles work. But then Epic boss Tim Sweeny doesn’t like those either.

Since Epic hasn’t been specific about any region other than the US and Europe it’s unclear exactly what’s going on in the rest of the world but as of right now Fortnite is not available on iOS or Android. So, sadly, the answer to the above question is just to… wait.

Last year, Epic Games stated that they hoped to get Fortnite back in the UK in the second half of 2025. That was before the recent court judgements in the US, but it’s unclear if that’s going to speed things up or not.

Thanks to Brexit, the UK is no longer in the EU, so any changes to the situation there have no relevance here. However, the UK does have legislation very similar to the EU’s DMA (Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act) so in theory there shouldn’t be a problem.

Epic boss Tim Sweeney told The Guardian last year that, ‘Unless Apple and Google manage to lobby the UK government that they should be able to continue blocking competition, we should be able to move on that by the end of next year.’

There’s no sign that Apple and Google are trying to lobby anyone at the moment, so that hopefully clears the road for a UK annoucement soon.

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