Apex Legends Ranked Roadmap: Legend Banning, Leagues 2.0 and Every Season 31-32 Change Explained

Respawn Entertainment just laid out the biggest shake-up to Apex Legends' Ranked mode in years. On October 20, Electronic Arts published a Ranked Roadmap detailing two waves of changes: a set of fixes arriving with Season 31 in November, followed by a full restructuring called Leagues 2.0 in Season 32, early 2027. Legend banning, wide-lobby balancing, demotion protection, new ranks and a reworked scoring system are all on the way.

Here's everything EA confirmed, broken down by what's changing and when, so you know what to expect before your next ranked split starts.

1. What EA Announced on October 20

The Ranked Roadmap post splits changes into two phases. Season 31 focuses on smaller, immediate fixes to match quality and fairness: Legend Banning, new wide-skill-lobby rules, easier Ranked access and a safety net against unfair demotions. Season 32 is the bigger swing — a full restructure of the rank ladder itself, with two separate leagues, new ranks, and a rebuilt scoring formula. EA frames the roadmap as part of its push to make Apex Legends "the most competitive Battle Royale," citing lessons learned from watching "what the true Apex professionals see" in the Apex Legends Global Series.

2. Season 31: Legend Banning Comes to Diamond and Above

Starting in Season 31, matches in Diamond rank and higher will open with a Legend Ban phase alongside the usual Drop Zone deployment screen. Every player in the lobby proposes one Legend they'd like to see banned for that match. Rather than simply banning whichever Legend gets the most votes, EA is using a weighted system: each proposed Legend gets a percentage chance of being banned based on its total votes, and the game randomly selects the banned Legend(s) from those odds. Respawn says it chose this approach specifically to avoid creating a rigid new "banning meta" where the same two or three Legends get locked out of every single match.

Any Legend that gets banned can't be picked by anyone in that lobby for that match only — it has no effect outside of Ranked and resets every match.

3. Season 31: Challenger and Goliath Matches for Wide-Skill Lobbies

Ranked lobbies don't always match players of identical skill, especially outside peak hours — a squad can end up several tiers above or below the rest of the lobby. Season 31 adds a visible Lobby Tier, calculated as the median tier across all squads in that match, and adjusts the RP entry cost for squads who land far from it.

• Challenger Match: triggers when a squad is two or more tiers below the Lobby Tier, lowering their RP entry cost. In one example EA showed, a Silver-ranked squad dropped into a Platinum lobby and paid a reduced 14 RP to enter.
• Goliath Match: triggers when a squad is two or more tiers above the Lobby Tier, raising their entry cost instead. In EA's example, a Platinum squad that landed in a Silver lobby faced a steeper 57 RP entry fee.

The entry cost is shown to squads before the match starts, so there's no surprise after the fact. EA says it will keep monitoring how RP progression plays out and adjust the exact costs over time.

4. Season 31: Easier Ranked Access and Demotion Protection

EA is also walking back one of its more unpopular recent changes. The "Road to Ranked" challenge gate is being removed, and access to Ranked returns to simply requiring Account Level 20. EA notes it will "continue to explore the specific level threshold" going forward, alongside ongoing anti-cheat work — a nod to the EA Javelin anticheat rollout the game switched to in September.

Alongside that, Season 31 introduces Demotion Protection. It activates whenever a single match result could drop you down a rank tier — most relevantly, if you get pulled into a Goliath Match with a high RP entry cost. While active, you get three Demotion Shields; any time a match result would cost you enough RP to demote, one shield is consumed instead of letting the demotion happen. Protection switches off once you've built up enough RP cushion that a single bad match can no longer demote you, or once all three shields are used up.

5. Season 32: Leagues 2.0 Splits Ranked Into Two Tiers

The bigger change lands in Season 32, early 2027: a restructure EA is calling Leagues 2.0. Ranked is split into two distinct leagues with different rules.

• Open League covers Iron through Emerald. Every match in this league starts from the Dropship, and RP values are rebalanced for a smoother climb.
• Pro-Am League covers Diamond, Master and Grandmaster. This is where Drop Zone deployment and Legend Banning apply.

6. Season 32: A New Rank Lineup, From Iron to Grandmaster

The rank list itself is changing too. Iron replaces Rookie as the standard entry rank for every player. A brand-new rank called Emerald slots in between Platinum and Diamond, with four divisions, its own badge design, and its own appearance in Auras. Master also gains four divisions. At the very top, Grandmaster becomes the highest rank, and to earn its exclusive Predator badge you'll need to finish the season in the top 750 players of Grandmaster.

7. Season 32: Scoring Gets Flattened, and Assists Disappear

Respawn is also rebuilding how RP is actually earned. Kill and placement values are being "flattened" — rather than one multiplying the other, each kill and each placement tier is worth a fixed amount of RP on its own. Every member of a squad now earns the full kill RP when their team gets a kill, instead of splitting credit through assists; assist and participation RP are being removed entirely. Entry costs will scale per division rather than per full tier, and the two leagues will weight scoring differently: the Open League leans slightly toward rewarding kills, while the Pro-Am League leans toward rewarding placement — a nod to how ALGS-level play already prioritizes survival over aggression.

8. Rewards, Ladders and What's Still Unconfirmed

EA says Ranked rewards are getting an overhaul alongside Leagues 2.0: new seasonal Auras, new ways to use existing Auras, refreshed Ranked Dive Trails, Epic and Legendary Apex Packs, and — notably — rewards for promoting mid-season instead of only at the very end of a season. EA says more specifics are coming closer to the Season 32 launch. Weekly Ladders, the limited-time competitive mode, are also being retired with Season 32; EA says a redesigned version of short-term competition is planned for a future date.

What the roadmap doesn't include yet: exact RP values for each rank and division, rank distribution targets, precise split dates, or the finalized Account Level threshold for Ranked access. EA frames the whole roadmap as a living plan, so expect specifics to firm up in the Season 31 and Season 32 patch notes as those launches approach.

Quick recap

• Season 31 (November): Legend Banning in Diamond+, Challenger/Goliath matches for wide-skill lobbies, Ranked access back to Account Level 20, Demotion Protection with three shields.
• Season 32 (early 2027): Leagues 2.0 splits Ranked into Open League (Iron–Emerald) and Pro-Am League (Diamond–Grandmaster), adds Iron and Emerald ranks, flattens kill/placement scoring, removes assist RP, and retires Weekly Ladders.

If you're still working out the fundamentals of the current system — RP, splits and season rewards — our breakdown of how Ranked works today covers the basics these changes build on, and the premade-squad matchmaking tests from Season 31 explain another fairness change landing around the same time. New to the game entirely? Start with our 2026 beginner's guide to Legend classes, currencies and modes. And since Legend Banning will affect pick rates, it's worth revisiting the Legend changes from the Marked midseason patch before Season 31 lands.

Official Resources

• Apex Legends: Ranked Roadmap — official EA announcement
• Apex Legends official site
• Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS)

For every other Apex Legends guide on the site, browse our full walkthrough archive.