What Is the Rarest Emote in Fortnite? Top 10 Rarest Emotes (2026)

If you have ever wondered what is the rarest emote in Fortnite, Fresh is widely regarded as the rarest emote in Fortnite, having not returned to the Item Shop since November 21, 2018. . Emote rarity in Fortnite is not just about age, though, and there are a couple of specific factors that decide where an emote actually lands on a list like this one. This article walks through the full Top 10, ranked from rare all the way down to virtually impossible to own, with an image for every entry so you can see exactly what each one looks like in game.

What Makes an Emote Rare in Fortnite?

Before getting into the list, it helps to understand how emote rarity actually works, because the in-game rarity label on an emote does not really tell you how hard it is to own. Rarity in practice comes down to two main things.

The first is item shop absence. Most emotes in Fortnite cycle through the daily item shop, and the longer one has been missing from that rotation, the fewer current players have had a chance to buy it. An emote that has been gone for a thousand days is genuinely uncommon, and one that only ever appeared for a single day is something close to a collector’s item.

The second factor is permanent exclusivity, and this is the stronger of the two. Some emotes were never sold for V-Bucks at all. Battle Pass emotes were locked to a single season and never returned. Hardware emotes were bundled with a particular phone. In each of those cases, there is a hard ceiling on how many accounts can ever own the emote, and that ceiling will never move. This is the same principle that drives the value of the rarest Fortnite skins, where a locked acquisition method matters far more than how the item looks. The emotes near the top of this list are the ones where that gate is permanently shut.

Top 10 Rarest Fortnite Emotes

Here are the 10 rarest Fortnite emotes ranked from rare to virtually unobtainable.

#10 – Rambunctious

Rarity type: Item Shop

Days absent: 1,000+ days

Rambunctious is one of the earliest emotes Epic ever placed in the Chapter 1 item shop, and it has now been gone from rotation for well over a thousand days, which is exactly why so many players actively search whether it is the rarest emote in the game. The honest answer is that it sits at number ten rather than near the top, and the reason is worth understanding because it explains the whole list. Rambunctious was a standard item shop emote, which means that during the long stretch it was available, thousands of players had every opportunity to buy it with V-Bucks. Age alone makes an emote uncommon, but it does not make it genuinely rare. Everything ranked above Rambunctious was either harder to obtain in the first place or was locked behind something that can no longer be accessed at all, and that distinction is the line between an old emote and a truly rare one.

#9 – Laugh It Up

Rarity type: Item Shop

Days absent: 1,470+ days (last seen May 19, 2022)

Laugh It Up was last seen in the item shop on May 19, 2022, which puts it at more than 1,470 days absent as of May 2026, and it is one of the most frequently discussed emotes on Reddit rarity threads, where players regularly bring it up as a forgotten emote they have not seen on an opponent in years. It edges ahead of Rambunctious for a simple reason, which is that it has been gone longer and shows even fewer signs of returning to the rotation. Like the entry below it, though, this was still a normal shop emote that anyone could purchase while it was available, so its place on this list is built entirely on the passage of time rather than on any kind of hard exclusivity. If you spot it in a match, you are almost certainly looking at a long-time player.

#8 – Welcome!

Rarity type: Item Shop

Days absent: Available October 11 to 13, 2019

Welcome! was in the item shop for a single three-day window, from October 11 to October 13, 2019, before disappearing from rotation entirely. The community consistently ranks it among the rarest item shop emotes of all time because so few players happened to be online and shopping during that exact stretch. There is one point worth being clear about here, since the naming sometimes causes confusion. Welcome! was technically purchasable with V-Bucks by anyone who happened to be in the shop on the right day, which means its rarity comes purely from a short sale window rather than from a permanently locked gate. That is the reason it ranks here at number eight rather than higher up among the truly exclusive emotes.

#7 – Kiss The Cup

Rarity type: Item Shop

Days absent: Available July 26 to 28, 2019

Kiss The Cup is one of the more misunderstood emotes on this list, because plenty of players assume it was a reward handed out only to 2019 Fortnite World Cup participants. That is not actually how it worked. The emote was put into the item shop from July 26 to July 28, 2019, and anyone with V-Bucks during those three days could buy it. The participant-exclusive items from that event were the World Warrior outfit and the Fishstick World Cup style, not the emote itself. Kiss The Cup is rare for the same reason Welcome! is rare, which is a very short shop window paired with a long absence since, but it does sit slightly above Welcome! on this list because it has now been gone for nearly three months longer.

#6 – Raise The Cup

Rarity type: Item Shop

Days absent: Appeared for only 2 days total

Raise The Cup is a trophy celebration emote that spent a grand total of two days in the item shop across its entire history, and it has shown no signs of coming back since. That tiny availability window is what pushes it above the three-day shop emotes lower on this list, because two days is barely enough time for the average player to even notice an emote exists, let alone decide to spend V-Bucks on it. One quick point of clarification is worth making here, because the names genuinely cause confusion. Raise The Cup is not the same emote as Kiss The Cup, which sits one spot below it at number seven. They are two separate emotes, both shop items with short windows, but Kiss The Cup had a slightly longer three-day sale while Raise The Cup only ever had two days.

#5 – Zombie Shambles

Rarity type: Item Shop

Days absent: Appeared for exactly 1 day, November 6, 2020

Zombie Shambles holds an unusual record, because it was available in the item shop for exactly one single day, November 6, 2020, and then it was never seen in the rotation again. The r/FortNiteBR community widely considers it the rarest item shop emote that anyone could simply buy with V-Bucks, since a one-day sale means the only accounts that own it belong to players who happened to open Fortnite on that exact date and chose to spend their currency on a zombie walk animation. That makes Zombie Shambles a genuine collector’s item, and it is the highest an emote can realistically rank on this list while still having been a normal V-Bucks purchase. Everything above it is locked behind a hard exclusivity gate that no amount of patience or V-Bucks can ever unlock.

#4 – Floss

Rarity type: Battle Pass Exclusive (Chapter 1, Season 2, Tier 49)

Exclusivity reason: Locked to the Season 2 Battle Pass

Floss is the point where this list shifts away from item shop rarity and into permanent exclusivity, because it was a Chapter 1 Season 2 Battle Pass reward unlocked at Tier 49, and there is no way for any player who was not active during that season to ever obtain it now. It is also one of the few emotes on this list with genuine cultural weight that reached far beyond the game itself, since the Floss dance went viral worldwide in 2018 and was being performed in school hallways by people who had never even installed Fortnite. That cultural footprint is part of why it remains so recognisable. Owning Floss in 2026 is a clear signal that an account has been around since the genuinely early days of the game.

#3 – Take The L

Rarity type: Battle Pass Exclusive (Chapter 1, Season 3, Tier 31)

Exclusivity reason: Locked to the Season 3 Battle Pass

Take The L was unlocked at Tier 31 of the Chapter 1 Season 3 Battle Pass, and it has never returned to the game in any form since that season ended. It is arguably the most iconic trash-talk emote Fortnite has ever produced, the one players spammed directly over a defeated opponent to rub in a win, and that reputation is exactly why it carries so much weight today. Anyone still using Take The L in 2026 is effectively announcing that they were there from the very beginning of the game. Because Epic has consistently kept Battle Pass cosmetics permanently exclusive and has confirmed that policy publicly more than once, Take The L is locked away for good and will not be appearing in the shop.

#2 – Scenario

Rarity type: Hardware Exclusive

Exclusivity reason: Bundled with the Samsung Galaxy S10 in 2019

Scenario was never sold in the item shop at all, because the only way to obtain it was to purchase a Samsung Galaxy S10 in 2019, where it arrived bundled alongside the Galaxy skin package. That means your ability to own this emote depended entirely on buying one specific phone during one specific promotional window, and if you did not happen to buy that exact device, there was simply no other route to it. Hardware-locked cosmetics like this are among the hardest items in the entire game to come across, because the eligible owner pool was capped from the start by how many people bought that particular phone. No amount of playing the game or saving V-Bucks could ever unlock Scenario, which is why it sits above every Battle Pass and item shop emote on this list.

#1 – Fresh

Rarity type: Item Shop (permanently withheld)

Days absent: 2,720+ days as of May 2026

Fresh is the rarest emote in Fortnite, and the reason it sits at the very top is a combination of extreme shop absence and a legal history that makes its return genuinely unlikely. The emote last appeared in the item shop on November 21, 2018, which puts it at more than 2,720 days absent as of May 2026, a longer stretch than any other emote on this list. The bigger factor, though, is the story behind it. Shortly after Fresh released, Alfonso Ribeiro, the actor who played Carlton in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, filed a copyright lawsuit against Epic Games over the dance the emote was based on. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, but Epic has never brought Fresh back to the shop in the years since, and that lingering history is what cleanly separates it from every other entry here. Fresh is not simply old. It is an emote Epic appears to have quietly decided to leave untouched, and that is what makes it the number one rarest emote in the game.

How to Get Rare Fortnite Emotes

The difficult reality is that most of the emotes on this list cannot be obtained through normal play anymore. The Battle Pass exclusives like Floss and Take The L are tied to seasons that ended years ago, the hardware-locked Scenario was never sold for V-Bucks to begin with and the eligible owner pool closed when the Samsung promotion ended, and an emote like Fresh has sat untouched in the vault for years with no real indication it is coming back.

For the item shop emotes lower on the list, the only genuine route is patience. You keep an eye on the daily shop rotation and hope that Epic decides to bring one back, which does occasionally happen with long-absent items. For the permanently exclusive emotes higher up, though, that route does not exist at all, no matter how long you wait or how much you are willing to spend in the shop.

The one realistic way to actually own emotes like Fresh, Floss, or Take The L without having been there when they were available is to look at accounts that already include them. A lot of long-time players who no longer actively play Fortnite end up moving on from their accounts, and those accounts often carry years of exclusive cosmetics that simply cannot be earned through the game anymore. If that is a path you want to consider, there are Fortnite accounts for sale that already include rare emotes and OG cosmetics, which is the closest thing to a shortcut that exists for items the game itself no longer hands out.

Why Rare Emotes Carry So Much Weight In Game

One thing that separates emotes from skins is how they are used. A rare skin sits on a character and gets noticed in passing, but an emote is something a player actively chooses to perform in front of an opponent, usually at a meaningful moment in a match. That makes a rare emote one of the clearest status signals in the game.

When you see an opponent hit Take The L over your eliminated teammate, or use Fresh after a build fight, you are looking at someone who has almost certainly been playing since Chapter 1. These emotes act as a kind of shorthand within the community, an instant way of recognising a veteran without ever checking their account level or stats. That social signal is a large part of why these particular emotes hold their reputation, and why players who own them tend to keep using them years later. They are not just animations, they are proof of when an account started, and that is something newer players genuinely cannot fake.

Will Any of These Rare Fortnite Emotes Ever Return?

It is worth being honest about the odds here rather than giving false hope, so here is a realistic breakdown of where each emote stands.

The ones that are almost certainly never coming back are Fresh, Scenario, Take The L, and Floss. Fresh carries the copyright history that makes Epic visibly reluctant to touch it, Scenario was tied to a hardware promotion that expired years ago and was never available for V-Bucks at all, and Take The L and Floss are Battle Pass cosmetics, which Epic has repeatedly confirmed it keeps permanently exclusive. None of those four have a realistic path back into the game through any normal route.

The emotes that genuinely could return one day are the pure item shop ones, which means Zombie Shambles, Raise The Cup, Kiss The Cup, Welcome!, Laugh It Up, and Rambunctious. Epic has revived long-absent shop items before, and none of these six carry any legal or structural reason they could not rotate back in eventually. There is also a layer of uncertainty around any collaboration or Icon Series emotes, since their availability depends entirely on licensing agreements that can change at any time without warning.

One pattern worth keeping an eye on is Epic’s OG Shop cycles, which have already brought a number of Chapter 1 skins back into circulation. If that same approach is ever extended to emotes, the older item shop entries on this list are by far the most likely candidates to reappear. That said, an OG-style return would almost certainly never touch the Battle Pass or hardware exclusives, so the very top of this list is best treated as permanently out of reach.