Highlights
- Epic Games teased its latest anime crossover, with leaks pointing to Ichigo Kurosaki, Rukia Kuchiki, Orihime Inoue, and Uryū Ishida arriving as playable skins.
- Launching during Fortnite Winterfest 2025, the crossover aligns with Epic’s high-engagement festive strategy and premium licensed content drops.
- Bleach also becomes Fortnite’s first anime collaboration for Chapter 7, reinforcing Epic’s push to position Fortnite as a cross-media entertainment hub.
Epic Games Inc. has officially signaled a new anime crossover for Fortnite, confirming its upcoming collaboration with Bleach. The teaser was posted on Fortnite’s official YouTube and X channels on Dec 14, 2025, announcing that the collaboration will drop on Dec 20, 2025.
While the teaser itself did not reveal much information about the crossover, shortly after, on Dec 15, @FortniteJPNews/X posted a “Fortnite x Bleach” poster, mentioning the characters reportedly coming to Fortnite. According to this leak, four Bleach characters are confirmed: protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki, Orihime Inoue, Rukia Kuchiki, and Uryū Ishida.
Epic has not issued a standalone press release about cosmetic items, including themed Back Bling and pickaxes; however, Ichigo's sword, Zangetsu, seems to be a part of the crossover as per the visuals from the teaser. Fortine’s anime collaborations are mostly in Battle Royale formats, and as per GameSpot, the coming Bleach crossover might also be added as Battle Royale, Reload, or Blitz Royale. Another report anticipated that the whole bundle might cost around 3000-3400 V-Bucks (Fortnite’s in-game currency), based on previous crossover-bundle pricing.
The timing is also crucial for this event; the collab was announced just ahead of Fortnite’s annual Winterfest event, starting from Dec 18, 2025. Additionally, Bleach has been observing renewed global engagement following the ongoing Thousand-Year Blood War anime adaptation.
Fortnite’s Festive-Season Collaboration Strategy
Fortnite’s annual Winterfest event is historically associated with elevated player engagement, free in-game rewards, and licensed content drops. Therefore, the period has increasingly become Epic’s primary window for testing culturally diverse collaborations, leveraging the festive season to maximize visibility across regions.
The Bleach crossover is part of a broad festive-season slate that will also include high-profile pop culture and celebrity crossovers. The slate includes Kim Kardashian and Harry Potter collaborations, along with Sabrina Carpenter and Hatsune Miku skins leaks.
Within Fortnite’s expanding anime collaboration ecosystem, Bleach would be joining a lineup that already includes Kaiju No. 9, Cowboy Bebop, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One-Punch Man; all in 2025. However, this would be Bleach’s first collaboration with Fortnite, and the first anime crossover to arrive for Chapter 7.
The circulation during the Winterfest event underscores Fortnite’s strategy of pairing premium IPs and mainstream entertainment properties to widen the audience base during the year’s most competitive engagement period. It seems that by clustering a wide range of anime, music, and TV-adjacent partnerships, Epic is reinforcing Fortnite’s role as a cross-media engagement hub rather than a traditional content-drop driven game.
