Apex Legends Season 31 Ranked: Legend Bans, Goliath Matches and How to Find a Trio

Apex Legends Season 31, Cipher, began on 3 November 2026, and it changes Ranked more than any season in a while. There’s a ban phase in high-tier matches, a new rule for uneven lobbies, and a scoring change that makes it matter much more who you queue with. Here’s what changed, what EA has said is coming in Season 32, and how to find a trio that suits the new system.

Legend Banning in Diamond+

Any Ranked match with Diamond+ players now starts with a ban phase. Each player requests one Legend. When the timer ends, every Legend’s chance of being banned equals its share of the requests, so a Legend with 80% of the votes has an 80% chance of being drawn first. The system currently bans two Legends per match. If fewer than four different Legends are requested, the previous week’s most played Legends are added so there are always at least four candidates.

EA chose a weighted draw instead of simply banning the most-voted Legends because, it says, a fixed ban list would just create its own meta. For a trio, the practical point is that your main can be banned in any given match. A squad where each player has a second Legend they’re comfortable on handles the ban phase far better than one built around three fixed picks.

Challenger and Goliath matches

When the population is low, usually outside peak hours, the matchmaker sometimes builds lobbies with a wide spread of ranks. Season 31 adjusts your entry cost when that happens:

• Lobby Tier is the median of all Squad Tiers in the match.
• Challenger match: if your Squad Tier is two or more tiers below the Lobby Tier, your entry cost is 30% lower.
• Goliath match: if your Squad Tier is two or more tiers above the Lobby Tier, your entry cost is 50% higher.

You’re told which kind of match it is on the Waiting for Players screen and again when you leave the dropship, so you can decide how to play it before you land. EA’s Ranked Roadmap also says demotion protection is now shown clearly: if one match could demote you, you get three Demotion Shields, and you only drop a tier once all three are used.

Why your premade matters more now

This is the change that affects who you should play with. Your Squad Tier is the average RP of your squad, but every player in a premade counts at the RP of the highest-ranked player in that premade. If you’re at 5,000 RP and you queue with a friend at 2,000 RP, the game treats your friend as 5,000 RP too. A solo teammate who joins you through fill keeps their own RP. And if a teammate never connects, your Squad Tier drops by a full tier.

So a big rank gap in a premade no longer averages out. It pushes the whole squad up, which means tougher lobbies and, if the gap is wide enough, Goliath entry costs. The trio that gets the most out of Season 31 is three players within a tier or so of each other, who queue together every time.

The new Ranked screens

Season 31 also shows much more of the scoring during a match:

• The Waiting for Players screen shows your Squad Tier, the Lobby Tier, your entry cost, the match type and where your squad sits in the match.
• A new Ranked tab in the inventory shows your RP goals, including covering your entry cost and the next promotion.
• The kill feed shows the RP earned for each kill, and a message shows your placement RP when a squad is eliminated.
• Your net RP turns red while it’s negative and white once it’s positive.

The Ranked map rotation is Storm Point, E-District Night and Broken Moon. Ranked Ladders arrive later in the split, with the first running from 10 to 15 November and four more weekly ladders through 13 December.

What’s coming in Season 32

EA’s Ranked Roadmap (20 October) sets out the next step for Season 32, in early 2027:

• Iron replaces Rookie and works like any other rank.
• Emerald sits between Platinum and Diamond, with four divisions, and becomes the line between two leagues.
• Grandmaster sits at the top. A Predator badge will require finishing the season in the top 750 of Grandmaster.
• Ranked splits into an Open League and a Pro-Am League, with a rewards overhaul.

EA says it will share more detail closer to the season.

How to find a Ranked trio for Season 31

Given the premade rule, the people you queue with matter more than ever. Look for:

• A similar rank. Teammates within a tier or so of you keep your Squad Tier honest and keep you out of Goliath matches you didn’t choose.
• Two Legends each. With bans in Diamond+, every player needs a backup they can play properly.
• A shared schedule. Wide lobbies happen most outside peak hours. A trio that plays at the same time every week knows what kind of lobby to expect.
• Comms. Apex is still won on rotations, pings and revives, and Ranked punishes a squad that doesn’t talk.

PaxJax is built for this. You can filter Apex players by rank, region and platform, jump into Apex game chat to find people looking right now, send an Invite to Play, and save a standing trio so the same squad is there for every Ranked session. For more on building a squad, see how to find Apex Legends teammates, or find players on the Apex Legends hub.

Find Your Apex Trio