Pokémon Go Anniverary Events To Bring New Group-Focused Gameplay

The one-year anniversary for the popular mobile game Pokémon Go is upon us and Niantic has announced a series of events to celebrate the milestone.

On the official Pokémon Go blog, a new type-specific event was announced for June 13, to coincide with the vernal solstice. Fire and Ice-type Pokémon will appear more often during the Solstice Event. Trainers will receive bonus XP for throwing Poké Balls accurately and receive discounts on Lucky Eggs in the Pokémon Go shop.

Pokémon Go Gyms will be disabled soon after the Solstice Event to prepare for what Niantic describes as “a new update focused on collaborative group gameplay features that will get you playing Pokémon GO in fun new ways.”

The final announcement was the reveal of real-world Pokémon Go events, including Pokémon Go Fest Chicago that will take place in downtown Chicago at Grant Park on July 22. This festival is a celebration of Pokémon Go and its community. Tickets and more information will be coming on June 19 at PokemonGoLive.com/Fest.

European events will appear from the months of June through September, with a Japanese Pokémon Go Event in Japan called “Pikachu Outbreak” also coming in August.

Pikachu Outbreak will also be “exploring a unique Pokémon Go experience.” More details on these events will be revealed in the coming weeks.

The details on the Pokémon Go anniversary events are still vague, and Niantic is possibly saving the big announcements for E3 2017. However, the upcoming new updates/events do lend themselves to some exciting possibilities.

Niantic has teased the release of the Legendary Pokémon from Generation 1 (Moltres, Articuno, Zapdos, Mewtwo) during the Webby Awards in May and the shutting down of Gyms for a short period of time could be a test for what’s to come.

The excerpt, “a new update focused on collaborative group gameplay features that will get you playing Pokémon GO in fun new ways” could mean that Pokémon Go trainers will have to focus fighting and catching Legendary Pokémon as a group. This could be similar to the first Pokémon Go trailer released that showed a crowd of players gathering in Times Square to battle Mewtwo.

We expect more Pokémon Go news to come from E3 2017 and we will bring the latest updates as they come.

In the meantime, let us know what you think of the upcoming Pokémon Go anniversary events in the comments section below and tell us whether these updates will bring you back to the mobile game if you stopped playing.