Apex Legends player count: 225,732 on Steam on Oct. 23, up to No. 6 as Season 31 and Legend bans near

Apex Legends climbed a spot on Steam ahead of its next season. Here’s how many people play it, how 2026 compares with last year and what Season 31 changes.

How many people play Apex Legends?

Apex Legends peaked at 225,732 concurrent players on Steam on Oct. 23, 2026, according to Valve’s most played chart, which ranked it No. 6, up from No. 7 a week earlier. At 3:52 a.m. ET on Oct. 24, 137,960 people were playing it on Steam.

Steam is one storefront. The count leaves out PlayStation, Xbox, Switch 2 and the EA app on PC, and EA doesn’t publish a combined live number.

Apex Legends runs well ahead of last year. Every month of 2026 so far has peaked above 200,000 on Steam, and October’s best day beats the whole of October 2025 by about 32%.

Season 30, Marked, launched on Aug. 4, and the daily Steam peak jumped from 193,642 on Aug. 4 to 277,082 on Aug. 5. Bloodhound got a new Ultimate, World’s Edge added East Village, War Camp and Tree Settlement, and Corrupted Attachments brought late-game power with a tradeoff.

On Sept. 29, EA Javelin Anticheat replaced Easy Anti-Cheat on PC. In week one, EA said it stopped 265,550 cheat attempts, banned 12,969 accounts and disrupted 91% of the 40 cheat programs it tracks. Its crackdown on hardware cheating added 4,058 bans for Aimzenix and 1,201 for Cronus. Respawn then fixed exploits that fired a whole magazine in one shot or let players rapid-fire and reload the Sentinel and C.A.R. SMG. The Steam peak rose from 192,537 on Oct. 5 to 238,375 on Saturday, Oct. 10, October’s best day so far.

The Blood Pact event followed on Oct. 13, with a haunted Kings Canyon and a Wildcard mode in which players side with Beasts or Demons.

Valve ranks the chart by its own measure of play, not by peak alone. Apex Legends stayed ahead of Call of Duty in the week Modern Warfare 4 launched, as our Modern Warfare 4 player count page shows, and trails Valve’s invite-only Deadlock by about 8,000 players.

Season 30 ends on Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to Respawn’s Oct. 6 update, and the Ranked roadmap of Oct. 20 puts Season 31 in November. Diamond and higher matches get a Legend ban phase, in which each player votes for one Legend and the game bans at random, weighted by the votes. Ranked entry costs change at the same time for matches with a wide spread of skill. Season 32, in early 2027, splits Ranked into an Open League and a Pro-Am League, replaces Rookie with Iron and adds Emerald, between Platinum and Diamond, and Grandmaster at the top. Fans of Respawn’s other shooter series have our Titanfall 3 release date page.

This page is updated as soon as Valve’s chart posts Apex Legends' Saturday and Sunday peaks or Respawn posts the Season 31 patch notes.