Disney announced today at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event presented by Visa that Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run is getting a Fortnite counterpart. It’s called Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run | Fortnite, and it ties the ride at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort to an all-new Star Wars adventure named Smugglers Gambit. Your run with Hondo doesn’t have to end when you step off the Falcon.
It launches Sunday, August 16, 2026, when the park opens at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios near Orlando, Florida. Smugglers Gambit goes live in Fortnite the same day. There’s no extra charge; it’s included with valid theme park admission.
How the mission works
You accept the special mission while standing in the attraction queue using the Disneyland app or the My Disney Experience app, or from inside the Smugglers Gambit island in Fortnite. Any guest logged into either app can accept it. During your smuggling run, you help collect crates for Hondo, and those crates unlock rewards that carry over into Fortnite. The story can start in the cockpit or start on Ord Ryla and travel back the other direction, which is a genuinely new idea for a Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction.
Claiming post-ride rewards, including a Forsworn Trooper Outfit, requires linking a MyDisney account with an Epic Games account, or having already linked them. Guests who ride but aren’t eligible to link accounts redeem a code in Fortnite instead. Fortnite itself is free to download on PC, console, and mobile.
Inside Smugglers Gambit
Smugglers Gambit is a brand-new Fortnite island developed in-house by Disney Games and Digital Entertainment, set around Mersa Veta Station on the planet Ord Ryla. Players team up with friends, take on co-op missions, battle pirates and Imperial remnants, encounter dangerous wildlife, unlock new gear, and build a reputation across the Outer Rim. Disney Games worked with Lucasfilm on new characters, locations, and stories, and with Walt Disney Imagineering to connect the island back to the ride at both Star Wars lands.
On the Walt Disney Imagineering Center Stage, Ray Gresko, SVP and Head of Product & Development for Disney Games and Digital Entertainment, and Asa Kalama, Executive of Creative & Interactive Experiences at Walt Disney Imagineering, talked with host Ashley Eckstein about using Unreal Engine 5 to enable ride customization and about the Lucasfilm collaboration behind the island. The Unreal Engine 5 detail is the part I keep turning over, because ride customization is a much bigger door than one Fortnite tie-in. Disney is framing this as an early example of connecting a physical experience with the digital world, one of several announcements from the convention floor.
Turnaround is fast on this one. The announcement landed at D23 and the mission is live the next morning, so anyone with a Sunday park ticket and a Fortnite account can run it same-day.
Source: Disney Parks Blog
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