Key takeaways
- Respawn's Apex matchmaking test results (September 30, 2026) cover two Season 29 Ranked tests: a one-tier premade limit and solo queue only for Diamond and up. Neither is becoming permanent.
- Solo queue didn't change who won. It spread top players across more squads, so Diamond players met Masters and Predators in more matches, not fewer.
- Diamond players who had been queuing in duos and trios returned far less often (return-rate changes of -16.6% and -20.9% on Respawn's chart). Respawn says the test "thinned out Ranked."
- On Respawn's Plat+ chart, a premade duo plus one random did about as well as a full trio.
- The biggest changes from these tests land in Seasons 31 and 32, with details due in October.
Respawn's Apex matchmaking test results are out, and solo queue for Diamond and up didn't survive them. Respawn's September 30 results post breaks down both Season 29 "Overclocked" Ranked tests. Did splitting up premades change who wins high-rank games? Why did Diamond players meet more Masters and Predators instead of fewer? And what happens in Season 31? The data answers the first two. The third has to wait for Respawn's October post.
Why Respawn went after premade squads
Both tests went after the same problem. Respawn describes it as running into "a stacked squad of the game's best players, especially when their Rank feels distant from your own." Its numbers:
Across Ranked, a squad with a premade duo plus a solo fill wins 19% more often than a squad of three solos. A full premade trio wins 17% more often.
It also says "85% of Masters squads are premade three-stacks." That's the lobby you face when pushing from Masters to Predator, where the RP line moves every day. Check today's Predator RP cutoff instead of trusting an old number.
Those percentages are easy to misread, though. The chart in the same post, "Ranked win rate based on premade squad status - Plat+", reads roughly like this (measured off of it, so approximate):
- All-solo squads: about 21%
- Premade duo plus one solo: about 40%
- Full premade trio: about 38%
So "19% more often" is a gap of about 19 percentage points, not a 19% bump, and the duo-plus-random bar is almost double the solo bar. Look at the two premade bars too. A duo with one random came out slightly ahead of a full trio.
A couple things stop us reading too much into it. The text says "Across Ranked" while the chart title says Plat+ (Platinum and above), so it's unclear which players the figures cover. And Respawn doesn't define "win rate". It can't mean winning the match outright: with 20 squads in a lobby the average outright win rate is 5%, and every bar sits above 20%. We won't guess what it measures.
Respawn's June 8 matchmaking tests blog had already flagged the pattern: players who play most of their games as a premade reach the highest tiers fastest, and the biggest performance gap between solos and premades shows up in matches above Diamond.
The two Season 29 tests at a glance
Both tests, side by side:
| Test | Who it affected | When | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-tier premade limit | Premade squads: teammates within one tier, not two | Live May 19, 2026; scheduled to run until the split ended June 23 | Small shifts in Platinum and Diamond lobbies; not permanent "at this time" |
| Solo queue only | Diamond, Master and Predator players: no premades | Scheduled June 30 to July 13, 2026, after a planned June 9 start was pulled | Best squads still won, top players spread out, return rates fell; not permanent |
The timeline, from Respawn's own posts (all dates 2026):
- April 14: Drop Zone Ranked lobbies switch to tier charts that count squads, not individual players, like the rest of Ranked. Maximum queue times rise slightly at the high end of Ranked and pubs.
- May 7: The matchmaker's first tight-skill search window doubles from 30 to 60 seconds, going global in Ranked and Unranked Trios after a test showed fewer skill mismatches (reported in the June 8 blog).
- May 18: The one-tier premade test is announced. It goes live May 19 after a short delay.
- May 20: The Diamond+ solo-queue test is announced for June 9 to 23.
- June 9: "Solo-queue test disabled and postponed to later in the split."
- June 24: The solo-queue test is rescheduled to start June 30 at 10am PT and run until July 13, "or until we have gathered enough data". Respawn cites matchmaking stability concerns after earlier outages linked to tests.
- August 3: The Marked patch notes confirm both tests ran and promise a results blog. Season 30 launches August 4.
- September 30: Results published.
Test 1: the one-tier premade limit
Normally you can squad up with friends within two rank tiers of you. Test 1 stopped short of banning premades and cut that gap to one tier instead. The goal was to stop wide-band squads from dragging lower-tier players into high-tier lobbies.
Did it work? A little, for a narrow slice of players:
- Diamond players faced about 8% fewer Diamond opponents and roughly 8% more Platinum opponents.
- Platinum players saw more Diamonds in their lobbies.
- Outside those two tiers, nothing meaningful changed.
In plain terms, Diamond lobbies got a slightly lower-ranked crowd, and Platinum players met more Diamonds. Stalling in that band? Our guide to climbing out of Platinum is worth a read.
Respawn's call: "A small improvement for a narrow slice of players was not worth the constraint on everyone else who was used to playing with friends within two rank tiers from them." The one-tier rule isn't becoming permanent, at least "at this time".
Test 2: solo queue only for Diamond and up
Test 2 went a lot further. Diamond, Master and Predator players couldn't queue as a premade at all. Respawn's May 20 announcement listed three hypotheses: more evenly matched high-skill lobbies, fewer hard-carries into Diamond, Master and Predator, and more trust in the fairness of those matches.
The results went the other way. The best squads kept winning, Diamond players met more top players instead of fewer, and Diamond duo and trio players came back far less often.
The best squads still won
Breaking up premades barely moved the results. In Diamond, match result distributions stayed roughly where they were. In Masters the top squads' win rate dipped a little, but the win-rate gap between the top 10 and bottom 10 teams held at 9%. Respawn's summary: "The best squad in the lobby still wins, whether or not they queued together."
Why you saw more top players, not fewer
Respawn didn't see this one coming and calls it "the most useful thing we learned." The explanation starts with how Respawn says a Ranked squad gets built:
- The matchmaker pulls 60 available players of similar RP into a lobby.
- It sorts everyone by RP and splits the list into thirds.
- Each squad gets one player from the top third, one from the middle and one from the bottom.
With premades allowed, top players cluster into a few squads. When Masters and above couldn't squad up, most of them didn't leave the lobby. They got spread out instead, one per squad, so more squads in more matches had a top-tier player. For a Diamond player, that meant more matches with a Master or Predator in them.
The pre-match chart counts squads, not players
The pre-match skill display made it look worse than it was, and Respawn says it can show very different squads the same way. Its example uses two lobbies with exactly the same 60 players: 6 Predators, 36 Masters and 18 Diamonds. Both bars read "Lobby tier: Master". One shows 6 Diamond, 12 Master and 2 Predator squads. The other shows 4 Diamond, 11 Master and 5 Predator squads. Each adds up to 20 because these charts count squads, not players, as Respawn's April 14 update confirmed.
Our reading, not Respawn's words: the example only works if a squad shows at the tier of its highest-ranked player. Six Predators in two trios make 2 Predator squads. Spread across five squads, the same six make 5 "Predator" squads. Same players, far more red on the chart. Respawn says it will keep iterating on this display.
Why Respawn scrapped solo queue
The same winners plus more squads with a top player would've been a weak result by itself. The return-rate numbers are what sank it.
Return rate means how many players came back to Apex during the test after playing in the days right before it. Respawn's chart, titled "Change in return rate: S29 vs. S26-S28 average", compares Season 29 with the Season 26 to 28 average, split by each player's tier when the experiment started:
| Tier at test start | Solo | Duo | Premade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | -3.6% | -4.3% | -3.5% |
| Silver | -2.7% | -3.1% | -3.2% |
| Gold | -3.2% | -4.0% | -3.9% |
| Platinum | -1.7% | -2.9% | -3.4% |
| Diamond | -0.6% | -16.6% | -20.9% |
Every tier dipped a little, between -1.7% and -4.3% below Diamond. Diamond players who'd been queuing in duos and trios fell much further, and Respawn highlighted those two cells: "The weakest numbers were in Diamond and above cohorts who had been playing in duos and trios." It calls them "some of the most engaged players we have." Diamond solo players barely moved, at -0.6%.
Why does that matter so much? Respawn says Ranked matchmaking improves when more players at every skill level are queuing: tighter skill bands, shorter waits, closer matches. Fewer players queuing pushes all three the wrong way. In Respawn's words, the test "thinned out Ranked. That is a bad trade."
So solo queue isn't becoming a permanent requirement for high-skill lobbies. Respawn hasn't ruled out future solo-queue tests, though: "That does not mean solo queue experiments are dead. It means this version was too broad." The goal it carries forward is to "reduce how often you run into fully coordinated top-tier squads, without taking away your ability to play with your friends."
How Apex ranked matchmaking works right now
With both tests over, Ranked runs on its standard rules again. Here are the basics from EA's help page on Apex Ranked, checked October 5, 2026:
- Matchmaking uses your current Ranked Points (RP). Matches get harder as your RP rises.
- Everyone in a premade duo or trio must be within two ranks of each other, or matchmaking fails. EA's example: a Bronze player can team with Rookie, Bronze, Silver and Gold players, but not with anyone Platinum or higher.
- A premade squad is matched against other squads using the highest RP in the squad.
- The ranks are Rookie, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Master. Apex Predator is the top 750 Master players per platform.
- EA notes: "Matchmaking rules can change during temporary tests."
Why not give solo players their own queue, then? Respawn answered that in June: splitting solos and premades fractures the player pool. In what it called an "oversimplified example", a 50/50 split means 50% fewer players in each queue, so at best each queue waits about 50% longer and match quality suffers. One queue with a constraint keeps the pool intact and queue times reasonable. The solo-only test ran into a version of the same problem, because it left fewer players in the queue.
One promised change remains unconfirmed. The Overclocked patch notes on May 4, 2026 promised a system "later this split" where solo players matchmake against opponents of a slightly lower skill tier, in Ranked and Unranked. Respawn hasn't confirmed its status since in any official post we found, so don't count on it being live.
What changes in Season 31 and 32
Respawn hasn't announced its Season 31 ranked changes yet. As of October 5, 2026, no Season 31 ranked details have been published (we checked Respawn's Steam feed through October 2 and EA's news list through September 30).
What Respawn has said is when: "The biggest upcoming changes that are coming as a result of these recent tests will be landing in Ranked in Seasons 31 and 32; we look forward to sharing those changes in October." More tests are being prepared too, with details closer to implementation.
The roadmap posts back that up. On April 30, EA's Overclocked updates post said "a Major Ranked Update is slated for Season 32" and that "Ranked will have a brand new look and feel". On July 28, EA's Marked roadmap check-in added: "We are adding Ranked Updates to Season 31!" Respawn said it added them so players wouldn't have to "wait until February" for movement, promising "impactful changes next season and then double down in the following season".
That February line puts Season 32 around February 2027. EA hasn't confirmed a Season 31 start date in the posts we checked, so we won't give one. Until the October post lands, treat any specific Season 31 ranked claim as unconfirmed.
What this means for your ranked games
Here's what the results change for you in practice:
- Nothing changes in your queue right now. Premades can span two ranks again, and solo-only for Diamond and up isn't permanent.
- One reliable friend might be enough. On Respawn's Plat+ chart, a premade duo plus a random did about as well as a full trio. No regular partner? Our Apex ranked duo queue service lets you rent a Predator-level player who parties up with you in ranked duo queue. You pay by the hour or by the game, and you play on your own account.
- Read the pre-match chart as squads. A lot of red can mean top players are spread across many squads, not that there are more of them.
- Know whose RP you're queuing on. Premades are matched on the highest RP in the squad, so with a higher-ranked friend you're matched on their RP instead of yours.
- Solo? Your teammates come from other bands. In a lobby built from thirds, your random teammates come from different RP bands than you. Respawn's official "Matchmaking Recruitment Drive" threads on Steam (May 13 and July 16, 2026) exist to help players find regular squadmates. Want to sharpen your own decisions first? 1-on-1 Apex coaching keeps you on your own account.
- Wait for the October post before planning a long climb. Respawn said it would share its Season 31 and 32 ranked changes this month, and a plan built on today's rules might not survive them.
And if you'd rather skip the stacked lobbies altogether, an Apex rank boost covers Rookie to Predator, played manually by verified Predators on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
FAQ
Is Apex solo queue only coming back?
Not as tested. Respawn says solo queue experiments aren't dead, just that "this version was too broad", and it's preparing more matchmaking tests.
Can I still play ranked with friends?
Yes. Premades follow the normal rule again: everyone must be within two ranks of each other, per EA Help. The one-tier limit isn't permanent "at this time".
Why do I keep seeing Predators in my lobby?
Partly the display. The pre-match chart counts squads, and in our reading a squad shows at its highest-ranked player's tier, so a few spread-out Predators can fill the chart. With a higher-ranked friend in your squad you're also matched on their RP.
What changes in Season 31?
Respawn hasn't said yet. It promised details on its Season 31 and 32 ranked changes in October, and as of October 5, 2026 none are out.
Why doesn't Apex have a separate solo queue?
Respawn says splitting solos and premades fractures the player pool. In its oversimplified example, each queue waits about 50% longer at best, and match quality suffers.