The Article

Bruno Mars Is Your Next Fortnite Festival Headliner

After everyone spent the last couple weeks believing the headlining artist for Fortnite Festival Season 9 would be Deadmau5, the reality ended up being something completely different: Bruno Mars will be the actual new Festival Icon when Season 9 launches on Wednesday.

Bruno Mars is an interesting choice because he's already in Fortnite. The Silk Sonic set, which included skins for both Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, was released way back in 2022. None of the eight previous Festival season headliners had been added to the game as skins prior to their respective seasons.

The new Fortnite Festival Season will come with a new Music Pass, which will be available for 1400 V-Bucks or via Fortnite Crew. The highlight is the Die With a Smile Bruno skin, which is based on the singer's look in the video for his and Lady Gaga's track Die With a Smile. That skin unlocks instantly when you purchase the pass, and you can gain XP across any Fortnite experience to progress the pass from there. Also included with the paid pass is a guitar, a drum kit, and jam tracks for Bruno-San's Theme Song, Silk Sonic's Leave the Door Open, ABC by tThe Jackson 5, and Mun Ra by Sabotage. There are free rewards as well for those who don't buy the pass, including instruments, auras, and four jam tracks.

Naturally, Bruno Mars will also have a set of cosmetics in the shop throughout the season, starting with the Bruno-San skin, which has two distinctive styles. Alongside the skin will be a back bling, a contrail, a keytar, a bass, and both an emote and jam track for his song Bonde do Brunão--all of these will be included in one big bundle. Outside the bundle, the shop will also have jam tracks for Die With a Smile by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, and APT by Rose and Bruno Mars.

For longtime Fortnite players, this update will also come with a feature that's been heavily requested for years and years: If you set your lobby music to random, it will actually play a different song when the one you're listening to finishes. Since lobby music was first introduced to Fortnite in Chapter 1 Season 6--that was seven years ago!--the random feature would simply pick one song and play it on a loop until you left the lobby.