Apex Legends: Ranked Roadmap for Seasons 31 and 32 Explained

Respawn has published a Ranked roadmap for Apex Legends that covers the next two seasons. Season 31 starts in November, and Season 32 follows in early 2027. The developers say it isn't everything, and more changes will come both before and after Season 32.

If you grind Ranked, this is the biggest overhaul in a while. Legend Banning arrives first, followed by new ranks, a split into two leagues and a rebuilt scoring system. Below we go through what each season changes, using the official developer post.

Season 31: Legend Banning and Fairer Lobbies

Season 31 adds a Legend Ban system to Diamond+ matches. Each player in the pre-match Banning Phase picks one Legend for possible banning. The chosen Legends then show their chance of being banned, based on total votes, and the system randomly selects bans using those percentages. Banned Legends can't be picked by anyone in that match. The devs chose random selection on purpose, because always banning the most-voted Legends would create its own banning meta.

Scoring also changes for lobbies with a wide skill spread. Every Ranked lobby gets a Lobby Tier, which is the median of all squads. A squad two or more Rank Tiers below it enters a Challenger match with a reduced entry cost. A squad two or more tiers above it enters a Goliath match with an increased entry cost.

Two more changes land in Season 31:

• Easier access: Road to Ranked Challenges are removed, and Ranked only requires Account Level 20 again. Respawn says its anti-cheat team is working on the integrity concerns this raises, and you can read about that effort in our anti-cheat update.
• Demotion Protection: this existing feature becomes easier to see. If one match could demote you, you get three Demotion Shields, and one is used each time you'd lose enough RP to drop a tier.

Season 32: New Ranks and Two Leagues

Season 32 reshapes the ladder. Iron replaces Rookie as a standard rank. Emerald is new, sits between Platinum and Diamond, has 4 Divisions and is added to Auras. Grandmaster sits at the very top, and you'll need to finish in the top 750 of Grandmaster to earn a Predator badge.

Ranked then splits into two leagues:

• Open League: the place to climb toward the next league. All matches start in the Dropship, and RP values get rebalanced because of Emerald.
• Pro-Am League: made up of Diamond, Masters and Grandmaster. Masters also gets 4 Divisions. Drop Zone deployment and Legend Banning live here.

Season 32 Scoring and Rewards

Kills and placement are fully flattened, so each kill and each placement is worth a set amount of RP. You'll also get full kill RP for every team kill, which means assists and participations are removed. Entry costs now rise at every division instead of every tier. The Open League weighs kills slightly higher, while the Pro-Am League weighs placement higher.

Rewards get an overhaul too. Respawn previewed new seasonal Auras, new ways to use Auras, a revisit of Ranked Dive Trails, Epic and Legendary Apex Packs, and rewards on promotion so you don't wait until season end. More details are promised closer to launch. Weekly Ladders go away in Season 32, with a new take on limited-time competition to be discussed next year.

That's the full picture for now. For ranked-ready picks, check our Legends tier list, and see how the devs have answered earlier feedback in Ranked system changes they declined to revert.