Apex Legends™: Ranked Roadmap
October 20, 2026
Table of Contents
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TLDR;
Read on to hear all about major changes to Ranked coming in Season 31 and 32, including:
- NEW Legend Banning
- Scoring adjustments for wide-skill matches
- UI clarity improvements
- NEW Iron, Emerald, and Grandmaster Ranks
- NEW Pro-Am League
- Ranked rewards overhaul
- and more!
INTRO
Over the next two seasons, we are adding major improvements and features to Ranked mode in Apex Legends™. As we worked to create these additions, we had a few guiding design philosophies; things we want to ensure that players feel about the mode:
- Ranked is the most competitive way to play Apex Legends
- Ranked is rewarding for all who play
- Ranked provides more ways to showcase your accomplishments
- There is trust in fairness of competition
While you read about the changes coming to the next two seasons, keep in mind: This isn’t everything. There are more changes to come, both in the short term and beyond Season 32, and as we approach each season, we will provide more detailed information about the additions and changes. Keep an eye out for more updates down the line!
SEASON 31
In Season 31, starting in November, we’re adding a Legend Ban system in Diamond+ matches, meaningful score adjustments, and other quality of life improvements. The intention here is to make changes that provide tangible value to players and lay the foundation for larger changes that come in Season 32, in early 2027.
LEGEND BANNING
Legend Banning has been a long-discussed feature, internally and externally, and we’re excited to bring it to life in Season 31 to help break up dominant metas at high-tier Ranked play, and keep the Ranked experience fresh and exciting. Legend Banning will be enabled alongside Drop Zone deployment, so that any match with Diamond+ players will use the feature.
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The pre-match flow for Diamond+ matches now includes a dedicated Banning Phase, where each player will get to choose one Legend for possible banning.
Once all players have elected a Legend for banning (or the selection timer expires), all chosen Legends will display their chance of being banned for that match. The percent chance of being banned is determined by the total votes for that Legend - more votes, higher chance of being banned.
The system then randomly selects Legends using the percentages, and players move onto the Legend Selection phase where banned Legends cannot be chosen by any player for that match.
Why not just ban the most-voted Legends, you ask?
While we did consider this as a solution, the overall goal of Legend Banning is to help keep the meta fresh by disrupting dominant patterns in Legend picks. A system that consistently bans the most-voted Legends creates its own banning meta, and it works directly against that goal.
As with all of our new features, we will monitor how this impacts Legend selection across all games, and continue to iterate on it as we find opportunities for improvement.
SCORING ADJUSTMENTS FOR WIDE-SKILL LOBBIES
In Season 31, while we continue to refine matchmaking, we’re making changes to entry costs to make matches with wide skill distributions feel more fair.
In Ranked games, our matchmaker works to balance queue times and RP match width. During periods of low population we see both queue times and match width increase, occasionally resulting in long queue times or lobbies with very wide spread of Rank Tiers. We are introducing these scoring changes to reflect the risk (and opportunity for reward!) that these games represent for all of the players involved.
Each Ranked lobby will have a “Lobby Tier” designation visible upon loading into a match; essentially the median of all squads. Any squad that is 2 or more Rank Tiers above or below the lobby’s Ranked Tier will have their entry costs adjusted.
If you are two or more tiers below the Lobby Tier, you will be entering a CHALLENGER match and your entry costs will be reduced.
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In theory, your chance of winning that match is lower, so we want Entry Costs to align. If you do manage to come out ahead, congrats, you beat the odds and probably need to be in a higher Rank Tier anyways.
If you are two or more tiers above the Lobby Tier, you’re loading into a GOLIATH match, and will see increased entry costs.
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Your chance of winning is much much higher and your Entry Cost will be increased to reflect it. You should be able to feast on all those lowbies, and still come out RP positive, right?
Let’s look at an example:
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In the above match, the Lobby Tier is set at Gold. Gold, Silver and Platinum squads are within acceptable bounds, but the Bronze squads will be marked as Challengers, and the Diamond squad will be marked as Goliaths.
We want it to be clear what type of match you are going into, to help you strategize how you want to approach each lobby. This is why the RP adjustment is made to the Entry Cost, instead of being revealed only at the end. We want you to understand what has to be done in this match to break even and go positive in RP.
For this change to scoring, we’ll be keeping a very close eye on player progression, as well as how much of an Entry Cost adjustment is required to reward players that can overcome the odds, and to prevent extreme boosting of squads that can easily nuke the entire lobby.
EASIER ACCESS TO RANKED
Road to Ranked Challenges are being removed and access to Ranked will move back to only requiring Account Level 20. We will continue to explore the specific level threshold to find the perfect fit to provide the best player experience for all.
Road to Ranked was intended as a skill-check for new accounts, ensuring that new players understood the rules of BR Trios, and had enough time on sticks to prove to themselves (and their future squadmates) that they were ready for the big leagues.
Ultimately, we found that the current set of challenges were not as effective as we would have liked, AND the completion of the challenges took some players too much time and effort.
We understand that some players may be concerned about the ease of access opening the door to waves of cheaters; rest assured our anti-cheat team is working hard to address these competitive integrity needs.
Ranked is a great mode, and we want to provide more consistent access moving forward. The more players that can get into Ranked, the higher the overall match quality will be in terms of matchmaking, both for the lobby and for your squadmates.
UI CLARITY IMPROVEMENTS
DEMOTION PROTECTION
This is an existing feature that provides limited protection to players from being demoted to a lower Rank Tier.
Ultimately, it was an unintentionally hidden feature, which we are giving a glow-up and will be better displayed for players when they are in the protected state.
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Demotion Protection activates if you are at risk of being demoted to a lower Rank Tier from a single match, i.e. if you end up in a Goliath Match and the heightened entry cost could pull you down. While active, you get three Demotion Shields. Any time you would lose enough RP to be demoted, one Demotion Shield is used, and you will only be demoted after exhausting all of your Demotion Shields. Demotion Protection ends when you either gain enough RP so that it is no longer possible to demote from a single match or if you use all your shields and demote.
SEASON 32
BIG CHANGES AHEAD. HOLD ON TO YOUR AURAS!
Ranked in Apex Legends has always had two distinct player types that keep coming back, season after season. We have our more casually competitive players that drop in for a split, play some games with friends, get promoted a couple of times and then move back to playing other modes. The other group is primarily our highest-skilled players, those that keep pushing through the entire season and generally finish their season in Diamond or Masters.
For the first time in Ranked, we will be formally recognizing each of these groups and creating experiences that better cater to their collective wants and needs.
We will be overhauling the Ranked tier structure and creating a clear separation between what we now call the Open League and the Pro-Am League.
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NEW RANKS
IRON RANK
Rookie Rank has had a bunch of special rules associated with it that are not really required in Open League. As a result, we have replaced Rookie with Iron, which is treated like a standard rank for all players.
EMERALD RANK
Emerald Rank is new, and sits between Platinum and Diamond. It is the new threshold between Open and Pro-Am Leagues. It will have 4 Divisions, a new badge design, and will be added to Auras, to ensure that there is representation in and out of matches. Emerald Rank should help alleviate the bottleneck many players feel when they climb into Diamond.
GRANDMASTER RANK
Grandmasters Rank will sit at the very top of the Ranked progression runway. It will represent the absolute best of the best. To earn a Predator badge, you will need to land yourself in the top 750 of Grandmaster at the end of the Season.
OPEN LEAGUE
Open League is where our aspiring Ranked players will fight it out, in hopes of playing in the Pro-Am League. All matches will start in the Dropship.
With the addition of Emerald, there will be a rebalancing of RP values for progression, and you may find yourself adjusting your expectations on how far you are able to advance in this season based on your previous accomplishments. Just remember, everyone is in the same position as you are in dialling in how they place in this new structure!
INTRODUCING THE PRO-AM LEAGUE
The Pro-Am League will consist of Diamond, Masters and Grandmasters Rank tiers. Masters Rank will also contain 4 Divisions, to respect the commitment it will take to climb to Grandmasters. Pro-Am matches are where Drop Zone deployment and Legend Banning will live.
RANKED REWARD CHANGES
Ranked rewards have been a hot topic for as long as Ranked has existed, and we’re very excited to give a bit of a preview of what changes we have upcoming for this season. If this information seems a bit light, that is intentional. We will have a lot more details to share, with some wicked visuals, closer to Season 32’s launch.
- New Seasonal Auras
- New ways to use Auras
- Revisiting Ranked Dive Trails
- Epic & Legendary Apex Packs
- Rewards on Promotion, so you don’t have to wait until end of season
RANKED SCORING
In Season 32 we are overhauling the scoring system to improve the progression experience and make the scoring system easier to understand.
Progression difficulty should gradually increase - not happen all at once - and the experience should be different for an average player compared to a professional player. RP math should be consistent, predictable, and should not require a calculator.
SCORE FLATTENING
First, we are fully flattening the value from kills and placement.
The previous formula allowed RP from kills to scale too much based on final placement, which was contributing to very aggressive hot drops and then ‘holding’ your kills through rounds to allow their value to increase. Starting in Season 32, each kill will be worth a set amount of RP, and each placement is worth a set amount of RP.
By flattening the RP values and removing the multiplier between kills and placement, we expect to see match pacing even out and players planning how they want to approach kills and survival in a more consistent way.
TEAM KILLS
To further clarify the scoring, you will get full kill RP from every kill your team gets regardless of your contribution.
This means assists and participations are being removed.
In addition to simplifying the scoring system, this refocuses individual success around team effort. The Apex Games are a team sport. If you are the team healer and you keep your fraggers alive, you deserve to be equally rewarded for your team’s success.
ENTRY COST CHANGES
We will also be making the entry cost increases more granular by increasing entry cost at each division instead of each tier.
Currently, we see many players hit a hard wall when entering a new Rank Tier (looking at you, Diamond). With the large jumps in entry cost, it becomes substantially harder to continue netting positive RP.
Increasing the entry cost by division will make progression through each division more competitive, and it will create a clearer measure of skill by separating more players along division lines, not only Rank Tiers.
OPEN VS. PRO-AM SCORING
To serve the different player motivations of our more casually competitive players and our highest skill players, the Open League and the Pro-Am League will value Kills and Placement differently.
The Open League will place more importance on gaining kills. Players in these ranks more commonly want to frag-out, and we want the Open League to be the proving grounds of your combat ability. Placement will still be a very effective way to gain RP, kills will just be weighed slightly higher.
The Pro-Am League, on the other hand, will weigh placement higher than kills. We know that our high ranked players want action packed end games, and we want to encourage that by making high placement the best way for these players to gain RP. Plus, as this is the Professional-Ameuteur league, the proportion of total points should be more in line with what the true Apex professionals see in ALGS with highly valuable top-end placement.
LADDERS
Weekly Ladders are going away as of S32. We’re doing a deep reimagining of what limited-time competition looks like in Apex Legends, and we’ll be talking more about it next year!
CONCLUSION
All of these exciting changes and more, coming in Seasons 31 and 32! We’ll be filling in more details for Season 32 in the lead up to season start, so keep an eye out. And Ranked improvements aren’t stopping at Season 32; make sure to stay tuned for additional updates as the seasons roll on!
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