The rarest Fortnite gliders are status symbols that instantly mark a player as a veteran, and most of them come from a time when the game had a fraction of the players it does now. A glider’s in-game rarity label like Epic or Legendary does not tell the real story. What actually makes a glider rare is how it was obtained: locked behind a retired progression system, tied to a one-time event, or bundled with a physical product few people bought for a cosmetic.
Here are the 10 rarest gliders in Fortnite, exactly how players got each one, and why most of them may never return.
What Makes a Fortnite Glider Rare?
Rarity in Fortnite gliders comes down to three things, and none of them are the in-game rarity color.
The first is age. Gliders released in the earliest seasons, when the player base was tiny, are rare simply because few people were around to get them. The second is event exclusivity: gliders tied to a one-time concert, promotion, or limited event that never returned. The third is being locked behind an external purchase, like a specific console or phone, where only a small slice of players ever qualified.
10 Rarest Fortnite Gliders Ever Released
A glider that checks more than one of these boxes becomes genuinely legendary among collectors. The ones below are the gliders that carry the most prestige in the game.
1. Mako
- Release date: October 26, 2017 (Chapter 1, Season 1)
- How players got it: Reach Season Level 25 during Chapter 1 Season 1, then purchase it from the Season Shop for 500 V-Bucks.
- Rarity tier: Uncommon (in name only)
Mako gets called the single rarest glider in Fortnite fairly often, and the reasoning holds up. Season 1 didn’t have the daily and weekly challenge structure later seasons used to help players catch up, so grinding to Level 25 took a genuine time investment during a launch window most players weren’t taking too seriously yet. Once Season 1 ended, the reward was gone for good.
It has never returned to the Item Shop and Epic has no mechanism for players to earn old Battle Pass tiers retroactively.
2. Founder’s Umbrella
- Release date: Available from Fortnite’s 2017 launch through Save the World’s Founder’s Packs
- How players got it: Purchasing a Founder’s Pack, then securing a Battle Royale victory
- Rarity tier: Epic
Despite the name, the Founder’s Umbrella is a glider, following the same naming convention Epic uses for Victory Royale reward umbrellas. Earning it required two separate hurdles: buying into Save the World during its paid early access period, and then actually winning a match in Battle Royale. That combination already limited it to a specific slice of the playerbase.
Its scarcity became final this year. Save the World went free-to-play on April 16, 2026, and Founder’s Packs were pulled from sale entirely in the run-up to that switch, as covered in this breakdown of Fortnite Save the World going free. There is no remaining path to this glider.
3. Discovery
- Release date: November 2, 2018
- How players got it: Purchasing an eligible Samsung Galaxy device (Note 9, Tab S4, or later qualifying models)
- Rarity tier: Rare
Discovery was part of a hardware bundle promotion that tied a Fortnite cosmetic directly to buying a phone or tablet, with eligible devices running anywhere from roughly $649 to $1,249 at the time. It’s one of the more expensive entry points on this list simply because the “purchase” wasn’t a game bundle, it was consumer electronics with Fortnite as a bonus.
Samsung and Epic haven’t repeated this specific promotion since, which keeps the pool of owners tied to whoever bought that generation of Galaxy hardware.
4. Rotor
- Release date: October 5, 2018
- How players got it: Purchasing the Fortnite-branded Nintendo Switch bundle
- Rarity tier: Rare
Rotor shipped with the Wildcat-themed Nintendo Switch bundle, priced at $299.99 at launch and sold specifically to tie the console to Fortnite’s growing Chapter 1 audience. Once that bundle sold out and was discontinued, Rotor stopped being available through any other channel.
Console bundle exclusives like this one tend to have a hard ceiling on ownership since they’re tied to physical retail stock rather than digital purchases Epic could theoretically reissue.
5. Stealth Pivot
- Release date: April 11, 2019
- How players got it: Purchasing a qualifying Nvidia GeForce graphics card
- Rarity tier: Rare
Stealth Pivot followed the same hardware-bundle logic as Discovery and Rotor, except this time the qualifying purchase was a GeForce GPU rather than a phone or console. Cards in the eligible range at the time ran from roughly $109 up to $409, making this a PC-specific exclusive that never touched console or mobile players at all.
Nvidia and Epic haven’t revived this promotion with a newer card generation, so ownership is frozen to whoever bought that specific 2019 hardware cycle.
6. Astroworld Cyclone
- Release date: April 2020
- How players got it: Attending one of the five live Travis Scott “Astronomical” concert showings
- Rarity tier: Epic
This one came out of Fortnite’s push into live in-game events. Travis Scott’s Astronomical concert ran across five separate showtimes between April 23 and April 25, 2020, and simply showing up to any one of those showtimes automatically unlocked the Astroworld Cyclone glider on a player’s account, no purchase required.
Epic used the same reward structure for a prior Star Wars in-game event, but the Travis Scott concerts drew the attention, with reported concurrent viewership in the tens of millions across the showings. Because the event was time-boxed to a single weekend and hasn’t been rerun, attendance from that April 2020 window is the only way this glider exists in anyone’s locker.
7. Beast Brella
- Release date: December 2022
- How players got it: Finishing in the top 100,000 competitors in MrBeast’s Extreme Survival Challenge
- Rarity tier: Epic
Beast Brella is another glider with an umbrella name, tied to the MrBeast crossover event. Players needed an account level of 15 or higher and two-factor authentication enabled just to enter, then had to place inside the top 100,000 finishers during the competition window, which ran from 11 AM to 2 PM CT (12 PM to 3 PM ET) on December 17, 2022, after the map opened for practice a few days earlier.
A hard placement cutoff on a single-day competitive window makes this a genuinely difficult unlock rather than a participation reward, and it hasn’t been reissued through any later MrBeast collaboration.
8. Flappy
- Release date: September 12, 2018
- How players got it: An active PlayStation Plus subscription during the promotional window
- Rarity tier: Rare
Flappy went out through a PlayStation Plus Celebration Pack, meaning it was gated behind both owning a PS4 and paying for an active PS Plus subscription during a specific limited window. Xbox, PC, and Switch players had no path to it at all, and Sony hasn’t repeated this exact bundle since.
Platform-exclusive promotions like this tend to age into genuine rarity fast, since the eligibility window closes the moment the promotion ends rather than fading out gradually like an Item Shop rotation would.
9. Blue Streak
- Release date: February 14, 2018
- How players got it: An active PlayStation Plus subscription tied to Celebration Pack 1
- Rarity tier: Rare
Blue Streak predates Flappy by several months as part of the very first PlayStation Plus Celebration Pack, back when Fortnite Battle Royale was still riding its initial launch wave. The requirements were essentially identical to Flappy’s later drop: PS4 ownership plus an active subscription during the promotion.
Because it was first in that particular promotional line, and PlayStation hasn’t reissued Celebration Pack 1 specifically, Blue Streak sits slightly ahead of Flappy in terms of how long it’s been locked away.
10. High Octane
- Release date: February 22, 2018 (Season 3)
- How players got it: Completing Tier 100 of the Season 3 Battle Pass
- Rarity tier: Rare
High Octane demanded full completion of the Season 3 Battle Pass, which meant either grinding challenges consistently across the roughly three-month season or spending real money on tier skips.
Season 3 ran long before Epic introduced some of the newer XP acceleration options players lean on today, similar to what’s covered in this list of the best Fortnite XP maps, so finishing the full pass took real, sustained playtime. Once Season 3 ended, Tier 100 rewards became permanently locked to whoever crossed that finish line while it was still live.
What is the Rarest Glider in Fortnite?
The Mako is widely considered the rarest glider in Fortnite. It required reaching Season Level 25 and spending 500 V-Bucks in the game’s first season, and it has only ever resurfaced once, accidentally, for a single day.
Can You Still Get These Rare Fortnite Gliders?
For most of the gliders on this list, the honest answer is no. Officially, you cannot obtain gliders that Epic has declared permanently vaulted, and the majority of these fall into that category.
There are a few narrow exceptions. Epic occasionally brings exclusive cosmetics back, as happened with the Aerial Assault One in December 2024, so staying updated on shop rotations and announcements is the only legitimate route to hope for. Accidental returns have also happened, most famously when the Mako briefly reappeared for a day before Epic pulled it again.
For hardware and promo-tied gliders like the Rotor and Galaxy, unused codes sometimes surface on resale sites like eBay, particularly codes originally attached to old consoles or phones. These are expensive, their validity is not guaranteed, and buying them is a risk rather than a reliable method. There is no safe or official marketplace for trading Fortnite cosmetics between accounts, so treat any account-selling offer with extreme caution.
Final Thoughts
The rarest Fortnite gliders are more than old cosmetics. They’re snapshots of Fortnite’s history, from the game’s earliest seasons to one-time concerts, competitive events, and hardware promotions that may never be repeated. If one of these gliders is sitting in your locker, you’re carrying a genuine piece of Fortnite history every time you drop into a match.
It became available again when Epic brought it back on December 20, 2024. Anyone who obtained it during that window has it, but outside of a shop return, there is no standard method to earn it.
Gliders from the first seasons are rare because the player base was tiny at the time, and the Season Shop progression system that awarded them was retired. Few players were around to unlock them, and they have rarely returned since.
Both were locked behind hardware purchases, the Galaxy set to Samsung devices and the Rotor to a Nintendo Switch bundle. Officially there is no way to earn them now. Unused codes occasionally appear on resale sites, but they are costly and their validity is not guaranteed.
No. Gliders are purely cosmetic. Their value is entirely about prestige and rarity, not performance. Owning a rare glider signals veteran status rather than providing any in-game benefit.
Most are unlikely to return, especially event and promo-tied ones. The Raptor has the best chance since it appeared in the shop multiple times historically. Epic does occasionally bring exclusives back, as it did with the Aerial Assault One, but there is no guarantee for any specific glider.
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