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Over the course of three days, Jacob Crow walked 26 miles through Chicago on a humid, rainy morning, participating in hundreds of virtual battles. He sought out the rarest Pokémon — shiny variants in particular — along with tens of thousands of other players.
“That makes it better to do it as a group together,” Crow said of the crowds that gathered to play the mobile game as part of the event. Pokemon Go Festival.
And I was there too, among those thousands, draining my phone’s battery in the sun while taking photos Hundreds of virtual creatures In Grant Park and other parts of the city.
During that fan gathering in early June, the game I’d been playing alone for the past year suddenly felt like a massive concert full of obsessed fans like me. Or even more than that.
I didn’t expect that. True when Pokémon Go has been released In 2016, it was a sensation in the mobile gaming space. Phones in hand, players took to parks and other public places to catch all those pocket monsters, in augmented reality animated form. For a while, it felt like everyone was playing Pokémon Go.
But then, as nerds do, Pokemon fever hit Cool down. People moved. I stopped playing the game regularly shortly after it debuted.
It turns out the enthusiasm has been simmering all along, and it takes something like Go Fest to bring things to a boil.
The event was expected to attract 40,000 people per day. But according to the enthusiast’s website Go Nintendomore than twice that number (90,000) tickets were sold for the Grant Park event (players entered and left at staggered times), and more than 717,000 players were recorded in Chicago catching nearly 62 million Pokémon during citywide play. Six couples got engaged at the event, proving that Pokémon Go may be a hidden dating app.
Pokémon Go Fest 2026 was special because it marked the game’s 10th anniversary and the ninth anniversary of the first Go Festival, which was also held in Chicago. This coincided with A Pokémon Fossil Museum Exhibit At Chicago’s Field Museum, which offers an amazingly detailed (and, of course, made-up) history of Pokemon’s evolution, complete with giant skeletons, it remains trapped in amber and a very sturdy gift shop.
The weekend also included a men’s national soccer team match and a half marathon. A lot of fans attended the different events that were gameplay Implementation suspended in some areas Including the field museum.
Back to Pokemon Go
Last year, I picked up the game again with some family members. Those of us who gave it up came back with intense devotion.
A lot has been added to the game since I last played it – from trading with other players (even remotely) to user-created routes and even large-scale raids that sometimes require more than ten players.
Pokémon Go players show off characters from the game that they must trade or hunt for others in Lincoln Park as part of an early morning “raid train.”
At first, the changes were huge, but the experienced group I joined provided helpful advice. Meanwhile, online videos, Wiki pages, and some Google searches provided answers to the obstacles I faced.
The game has become a daily habit for our group. We exchanged gifts, traded lucky Pokemon, and walked a lot. Pokémon Go Fest provided a great excuse to get together, eat lots of local food, and play a game together that we would all enjoy separately.
We purchased single day tickets for the Grant Park 10th Anniversary event and got tickets to the fossil museum exhibit. When we arrived in Chicago, we saw Pokemon fans everywhere, some wearing Eevee hats or Gengar t-shirts, carrying Pikachu backpacks or doing full cosplay costumes.
Age doesn’t seem to matter. Boomers, Gen Z players, and young kids have all had their phones out, spinning up PokéStops and waiting to catch some rare massive Pokémon characters.
Pokemon Go game in real life
When Niantic created Pokémon Go, it focused on the real-world aspects of the game. Niantic founder John Haneke, who helped create Google Maps and Google Earth, told me last year when I covered its sales (Pokémon Go and other Niantic games were Scooply got it) The game focused on encouraging players to venture outside and explore.
However, even playing Pokémon Go abroad can be isolating. You’re looking at your phone and interacting with virtual characters or remote players, not interacting with the people around you.
This was not the case at Go Fest.
With tens of thousands of locals and travelers around us, we were suddenly in a very large club. Strangers who saw us playing at the café asked what we’d picked up so far. Passers-by shouted: “Nice outfit!” To my sister-in-law, Lina Galaga, for her silhouette. Some pointed and smiled at the fancy Excavator Pikachu keychain we picked up at the Field Museum and wore in public.
Meanwhile, within our small group, we traded Pokemon, purchased virtual supplies, developed strategies to maximize our game goals and shared news updates. I spent about $30 on small transactions, like premium raid passes and extra storage to hold more items and more captured Pokémon. Some in my group spent hundreds of dollars preparing for Go Fest.
Players gather at Chicago’s Grant Park as part of the 2026 Pokémon Go Fest event.
26 miles of walking
Our group had two leaders: one was Linh, who kept us updated with social media posts. The other was Jacob Crowe, who did 26 miles of walking this weekend (he’s also a relative of mine, a little further away). He’s so dedicated to the game that he participated in 225 group raid battles to catch Mewtwo, one of Go Fest’s main Mega Pokémon characters.
The goal was not just to capture Mewtwo, but to capture his rare forms, such as the perfect form called Hundo. Get one from Hundo and also from Shiny, and you’ll get the coveted Shundo Mewtwo – and a lot of jealous fellow players. A version of Mewtwo that features a Chicago background has also been highly sought after.
Crowe and his wife, Maria, drove from Indianapolis, where they participated in local Pokemon raid events, but nothing of the sort.
“I knew there would be a lot of people, but I didn’t know there would be that Which A lot of people,” he told me.
He spent 18 hours a day playing Pokémon Go. He says he had a great time and wants to do it again.
It was Crowe who led our group to the 5 a.m. “raid train” in Lincoln Park, before the official Go Fest event in Grant Park that we would later participate in. When it started to rain lightly, we walked around the park, catching all the Pokemon we could and watching players swap and join raid battles. This was not the main event. It was a social gathering and a preview of the big show that was coming later that day.
Mewtwo’s big raid finale
I wasn’t expecting to experience cognitive dissonance when I arrived at Grant Park with my group, but I did as soon as I saw the giant pink inflatable Jigglypuff near the park’s large fountain. In the game, I think Jigglypuff is very small; Here, the Pokemon was easily 10 feet tall.
Throughout the park, team banners, magic and rotating Pokestops have been amplified to gigantic proportions, dotted over a wide area with colorful landmarks.
The final challenge at Pokémon Go Fest was a giant party raid to catch Mewtwo.
We took pictures and started setting up our virtual props. The cloudy morning soon gave way to a hot day. Once the game started, we saw people walking around with little umbrellas attached to their phones, both to reduce the glare on their screens and to keep their devices from overheating in the sun.
Challenges require moving from one area to another and completing tasks such as capturing 20 different types of Pokemon in one area. Raid battles to catch larger, stronger Pokémon were a constant.
Pokemon music blasted throughout the park. People were walking and swiping their screens to throw Poké Balls as they walked. A couple near us shouted “Hondo! You’ve got Hondo!” The two hugged as if they had just found out they were going to have a baby.
We walked and walked and fisted and fisted until the end: a massive team battle with hundreds of players together trying to defeat massive versions of Mewtwo.
Everyone who fought did so as part of a “unit raid.” Part of the battle requires players to raise their phones in the air and then swing them down.
When the massive raid was over, the crowd let out a loud “WOOOOO!” It’s over. We were all left trying to get the prize with our first dedicated offering of Pokéballs. We’ve all fallen for Mewtwos.
The Pokémon Fossil Museum exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago is an alternate history of Pokémon evolution.
Pokemon fossils are awesome
We continued raiding and trading through the evening and the next day, but our next big event was a visit to the Paleontology Museum.
The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago is a real museum, with exhibits of actual fossils, but for this event, the curators set up fossil exhibits of different Pokémon characters. They took their work seriously.
Far from being a simple one-room pop-up, the carefully arranged exhibit features detailed descriptions and full skeletons of Pokémon characters, as well as other artifacts like (fake) fossilized feces and Pokémon bugs trapped in amber.
I felt bad for the parents of young children who had to walk the line between telling them this show wasn’t real and letting these kids enjoy an incredibly imaginative presentation.
The expo was followed by a robust gift shop featuring only Pokémon merchandise and open exclusively to attendees. There was a limit of five items, and the hot item was limited to one item per purchase excavator pikachu plush.
The exhibition continues until April 2027.
Pablo and Lena Galaga visit Jigglypuff at Pokémon Go Fest 2026 in Chicago. A ticketed event was held in Grant Park, attracting tens of thousands of Pokémon trainers.
Would we do it again?
By the end of the weekend, we were all exhausted. We were mentally and physically drained, like the batteries on our phones, from staring at our screens and keeping track of all our shiny collectibles.
We were amateurs, though. David Barnwell, an attendee who owns a dog boarding business near Akron, Ohio, has attended Go Fest events with his wife in cities including Seattle, Miami and New York. He’s always been a collector, and says he likes Pokémon Go’s focus on acquisition. He loves meeting the different people involved in the game.
“We’re always amazed by the different types of people you’d never expect to play Pokémon Go, and they’re all so friendly,” Barnwell said.
But he also feels that things have changed since the Pokémon Go acquisition last year.
For one thing, Barnwell said, there aren’t any Pokémon that haven’t been seen before during the event anymore. The event is more widespread, with city-level challenges that make it less centralized.
“This is really annoying. We liked it when it was accessible on foot,” he said. “I appreciate that you’re trying to get different people together in different parts of town or whatever you think you’re trying to do, but we don’t like that at all.”
His family’s attendance at future Go events will depend on whether the host city is one they wish to visit. Tokyo, a return to Seattle and an event near the Grand Canyon are on their bucket list.
As for our group, we are already talking about holding Go Fest next year, but that will also depend on everyone’s schedules and where the US event will be held next. For now, we plan to continue playing and caring for our growing Pokémon collections.
