In this paper, the translaminar initiation fracture toughness of a carbon–epoxy non-crimp fabric (NCF) composite laminate was measured using a compact tension (CT) test. The translaminar fracture toughness of the individual unidirectional (UD) fibre tows was related to that of the NCF laminate and the concept of a homogenised blanket-level translaminar fracture toughness was introduced. Using an approach developed for UD-ply prepreg composites, it is demonstrated that the translaminar fracture toughness of off-axis fibre tows/NCF blankets can be analytically related to that of axially-loaded fibre tows/NCF blankets with a difference between experimentally-measured and predicted values lower than 5%.