Like other battle royale games, the maps in Apex Legends play a big role in how each match goes. Apex Legends has multiple maps in its battle royale mode that it rotates through, with the rotation changing season to season and during limited-time events. Developer Respawn also regularly updates Apex Legends' older maps, changing out points of interest and named locations.

Larger map updates occur at the start of new seasons, while smaller changes like "Town Takeovers" and teasers for future map evolutions and new playable characters typically happen mid-season. Town Takeovers--new points of interest that are each thematically tied to a different playable legend--are usually tied to events. Brand-new maps are traditionally added to Apex Legends in the final season for each year.

The map rotation also changes depending on whether you are playing in ranked or unranked lobbies. For ranked lobbies, each season is cut into two splits and each split will have a static map. For unranked lobbies, the maps rotate every few hours throughout the day. As of Season 11: Escape, the unranked map rotation no longer contains all of the maps, with only two maps in rotation at a time.