From October 22, UEFN Islands Need Portrait Art and a Logo to Publish

Epic's ecosystem release notes for Fortnite 42.40, published with the October 15 update, put a hard date on the new Discover look. Starting Thursday, October 22, 2026, islands must include portrait thumbnails, landscape thumbnails and logos to publish or update. Epic's wording is that the assets are "required to publish or update your island", so the first patch you push after that date needs the new art in place.

What Epic is asking for

The requirement comes with a Discover redesign that Epic says is rolling out in phases, with autoplay video, new tile shapes and a cleaner treatment for island logos. To feed it, the 42.40 notes introduce four new asset types:

• Two portrait thumbnails: one with art and logo, one art-only
• An art-only landscape thumbnail
• A transparent island-name logo
• A gameplay video for the island details page

The October 22 rule names the thumbnails and logos as the gate for publishing; the notes list the gameplay video as a new asset type without saying it is mandatory. Epic points to its Making Thumbnails and Videos documentation for exact dimensions, and that page is the one to check before exporting anything.

Why the date is awkward

42.40 is the last update of Chapter 7 Season 4, which ends on October 31, and Epic's own known-issues thread already targets fixes for v43.00 on November 1. That leaves creators a short window between now and Wednesday to push any Fortnitemares tweaks under the old rules, and nine days after it in which every update needs the full asset set.

Horror islands in particular have a reason to stay current. The Safety in Numbers quests that arrived with Fortnitemares send players into UEFN Horror Creator-made islands with at least one friend in their party. According to Beebom and games.gg, there are ten quests, each asking for 80,000 XP on those islands, with rewards at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 completions ending in the Cuddlz Back Bling. XP earned in Battle Royale, Zero Build, Reload, Horde Rush or OG does not count. Both guides list October 31 as the deadline; some other guides say November 12, so the in-game Quests tab is the reference.

Known issues before you publish

Epic's v42.40 known issues post lists two problems that hit publishing directly, and they share a workaround:

• Redirector-related validation errors when publishing. Close UEFN and delete the `ValkyrieUploadTemp` folder under `%LOCALAPPDATA%\UnrealEditorFortnite\Intermediate`. Fix planned for v43.00.
• Session launch failing at the versioning stage. Same folder, same deletion, then restart UEFN.
• UEFN crashing after updating through the new Epic Games Launcher. Under investigation, no date given.
• Player Reference device showing the default outfit after respawn on some islands. Fix targeted for v43.00 on November 1.

Also in 42.40 for creators

• Abilities and Fortnite Template Abilities are out of Experimental. Abilities now use entities instead of agents, and `CentralAngle` is renamed `Angle`, which now takes radians.
• A new Verse `text_channel` API in `/Verse.org/Chat` for in-island chat channels of up to 100 participants.
• `event(t)` becomes subscribable by default in 43.00. Unpublished code with custom extension methods on it may hit ambiguous-overload or name-conflict errors; Epic's fix is to remove those extensions.
• The IARC age-rating questionnaire is now embedded in the Creator Portal publish flow.
• The publish memory check is moving into the profiling tools and will report real units: today's 100,000-unit limit will read as 300 MB.

Every horror island IslandAtlas tracks, including co-op escapes like WEREWOLF ESCAPE [HORROR] and Outbreak Division ESCAPE, falls under the same rule: the first update after October 22 needs portrait art, landscape art and a logo, or it does not ship.