Apex Legends just shared its vision for the next year, and seeing plans for "Season 32" has aged me terribly
Apex Legends just shared its vision for the next year, and seeing plans for "Season 32" has aged me terribly
Apex Legends just dropped a roadmap for the next 12 months, detailing not only what's just arrived in Season 28, but teasing new content as far ahead as Season 32. Thirty. Two. Seasons. How the time flies… Anyway, it's a rare and unexpected look into the far future from Respawn Entertainment - while it'll always hype up the content in an upcoming season, it's rare to see the studio outlining what's coming in subsequent ones. Two new legends, character and class reworks, overhauls to looting, and more can be spotted on this new roadmap, and while there's nothing massively unexpected, it's still a reassuring look ahead for one of the best battle royale games around.
I was there for the magical day Apex Legends shadowdropped - what a time that was. The fact that Apex just turned seven years old, and I'm now seeing Season 32 getting mentioned, is pretty mind-blowing, but a testament to the support Respawn has given the game and the way it has evolved it. The first step of this new roadmap, Season 28, is already live, and while it's a solid season that brings the intriguing new breaching mechanic, Hardlight, the future seasons are piquing my interest far more.
Season 29 adds a new legend, roughly one year on from the last addition to the roster, Sparrow. All we know so far is that they are a Skirmisher, putting them in the same kind of aggressive category as legends like Ash, Wraith, and Octane. It's probably a good thing, then, that a movement update is being planned for Season 29 alongside some map quality of life tweaks, too. There's also mention of a "respawn evolution update" - a bit vague, but it seems like some kind of new mechanic for resurrecting your teammates could be on the way.
Season 30 is light on totally original content, but the update to World's Edge (Apex's second-oldest map and my personal favorite battleground) will be enough to keep me happy. On top of that, an overhaul to looting is planned, aimed at "reinvigorating how to make that power progression more streamlined and really impactful," according to franchise director Josh Bridge. There's also a rework for a Recon legend coming in Season 30 as well.

Moving on to Season 31, and there's a very vague "battle royale update" planned, which could involve anything from how you drop in, to zone sizes and collapse times, to scoring tweaks, so it's really hard to judge just how significant this'll be. Another individual legend is getting a rework, and another weapon is being blessed with an akimbo attachment. The Mozambique and P2020 have already been given the same treatment in recent seasons, so I'm curious to see which weapon is next - my money is on the Alternator. That would be properly lethal.
Finally, capping off the roadmap, Season 32 is bringing another new legend. This sees a slight acceleration in the rate at which Respawn is delivering fresh characters - the gaps between Alter (May 2024), Sparrow (May 2025), and the new Skirmisher legend in Season 29 (May 2026) have all been 12 months. This second new legend on the roadmap is planned to arrive in February 2027, so that's a gap of just nine months. Whether this will be the cadence going forward is unclear, and of course any content that far away is subject to delays. But hey, if Respawn sticks to this plan, it'll be the shortest wait between new legends for a long old time. A class overhaul and "major" map update are also expected to arrive in Season 32.
Respawn will also consistently deliver new Wildcard events, anti-cheat improvements, and balance changes throughout all of these seasons.

It's encouraging to see Respawn being this transparent and looking this far ahead, although it does open it up to criticism should any of those plans change. The things marked as "locked" on the roadmap have "the most concrete timeline," so we shouldn't see any movement there. However, Respawn disclaims that "'in progress' denotes that the features are being actively worked on, and 'planned' content is in preproduction, with work to start soon. If we make changes to the projected timeline, we'll do our best to communicate what's changed and why."