Seasons and the monthly LP reset explained

A season is one calendar month

League seasons follow the calendar. A season starts at 00:00 UTC on the first day of a month and ends when the next month begins, also in UTC. There is no off-season and no break between seasons: the moment one ends, the next one is running.

The home page and the league page both show the current season and how many days are left in it, so you always know how much time you have to push for a better finish.

UTC is used everywhere in the league, for seasons, daily goals and the daily LP cap alike, so that a match never belongs to a different day or season depending on where you are.

The soft reset rule

When a season ends, LP is not wiped. It is reset softly. The pivot point is 1200 LP, the floor of Operator, roughly the middle of the ladder. If you finished above it, a quarter of the distance between your LP and 1200 is removed. If you finished at or below 1200, nothing changes.

In formula form: new LP = 1200 + (old LP - 1200) × 0.75, rounded, for anyone above 1200. A few examples:

• 2800 LP (Apex threshold) becomes 2400, the floor of Keymaster
• 2000 LP becomes 1800
• 1600 LP becomes 1500
• 1300 LP becomes 1275
• 1200 LP or less stays exactly where it is

Why nothing below 1200 moves

A reset that pulled everyone toward the middle would push players below 1200 up. That would hand out LP nobody won in a match, show leagues nobody earned, and the system would then have to take that LP back through losses over the following weeks. The league never creates LP out of thin air, so the reset only ever lowers.

The effect is a ladder that compresses at the top each month. Players who climbed high have to prove it again, and the order between players is preserved: if you were ahead of someone above 1200, you are still ahead of them after the reset.

For players in the lower leagues the meaning is simple: the turn of the month costs you nothing. Every LP you climbed from Initiate up to 1200, the floor of Operator, stays with you, and the new season continues from where you were.

Your hidden level is not reset

Behind your LP there is a hidden skill level, the estimate built from your placement and your results. The season reset does not touch it. That matters because LP is constantly pulled toward the level your hidden rating points to.

When your LP sits below that level, wins pay more and losses cost less. A full league (400 LP) below it, a win pays 1.75 times its normal amount and a loss costs only a quarter. So a player who really belongs in Apex and was reset to Keymaster will climb back noticeably faster than a player who is genuinely at Keymaster level.

One thing keeps the return from being instant: you can gain at most 200 LP per UTC day. Winning back 400 LP therefore takes at least two days of play, which is what makes the start of a season feel like a real race rather than a formality.

What carries over

Most of your league identity survives the turn of the month. Only the LP number above 1200 is trimmed. The reset is a correction to the number on screen; it does not erase what the system has learned about your level, which is why your opponents are still picked close to you.

• Your hidden skill level and match rating stay as they are
• Your placement stays done; you do not replay placement games each season
• Your win and loss record on the league page keeps counting
• Your rank shields are not touched by the reset
• Your season XP and season tier start fresh, because they belong to the season

Season results are kept

Before your LP is trimmed, your finish is written down: your final LP, your league and division, and your position on the ladder at the end of the season. This record is permanent and the reset can only be applied once per player per season, so a repeated job can never lower anyone twice.

The league page shows your result from last season next to the current one, along with your position, so a strong month stays visible even after the numbers are reset.

If you finished placement during the month that just ended, you get a season result. If you are only placed in the new month, there is nothing to record or reset yet.

When the reset happens

The reset is applied by a job that runs every day. It picks up the season that just ended shortly after the month turns over in UTC, and if a run is ever missed, the next day's run completes it. A match that finishes while the reset is being applied cannot overwrite it, and the reset cannot overwrite the match: both use the same lock on your league record.

So if your LP still shows last month's number in the first hours of a new month, nothing is wrong. When the reset arrives, it is applied to your LP as it stands at that moment.

Making the most of a season

The start of a month is the best time to climb if you finished high last season, because the pull toward your real level is strongest right after the reset. Play your daily matches early in the season rather than saving them for the last days, since the daily LP cap limits how much you can recover in one sitting.

An example: you end a season on 2000 LP, the floor of Vanguard. The reset brings you to 1800, which is Accelerator II. If your hidden level still points at 2000, you are half a league below it, so each win pays 1.5 times its normal amount and each loss costs half. The 200 LP gap is small enough that the daily cap would let you close it in a single strong day.

If you are below 1200, the reset changes nothing for you. Every month is simply a fresh look at your season finish and your position on the ladder.