The details of the first Fortnite World Cup have been announced by developer Epic Games.

After 10 online qualifiers, the finals will be held in New York from 26-28 July, where the top 100 solo players and the top 50 two-person teams from around the world will compete for a prize pool of more than $30m (£23m). The top solo player at the end of a weekend of battle will earn $3m.

Running from 8 April to June 16, the online qualifying rounds will be open to all eligible Fortnite players, each round offering $1m in prize money for high-performing entrants. Epic Games will also be continuing its in-game weekly $1m tournaments.

No further details about the New York finals have been released, but the staging is likely to be spectacular. Last June, the developer held a pro/celebrity Fortnite tournament during the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles, hiring out the giant Banc of California Stadium and inviting 15,000 fans.

Since its release in September 2017, Fortnite: Battle Royale has become one of the biggest video games in the world with over 200 million registered players. On 2 February, the game had its largest concurrent online player count when 10.7 million people logged in to view a virtual concert by dance music artist Marshmello.

This will be Fortnite’s first major esports event, and it will be competing against games such as League of Legends and StarCraft 2, which attract vast online audiences as well as filling stadiums. Last year the League of Legends World Championship final, held at the Munhak Stadium in Incheon, South Korea, drew a peak online audience of over 100m.