Pokémon GO Fest 2025: Inside the Biggest Event on the Pokémon GO Calendar

The best way to describe a Pokémon GO Fest? “Like going to Coachella or Glastonbury,” says Moise Kabongo, the game’s French marketing manager.

He’s not far off. Pokémon GO Fest 2025 took over Paris this weekend, attracting tens of thousands of trainers from across the globe to catch, trade, and battle Pokémon. Special cell phone towers were even erected to cope with the signal surge.

Centred in Paris’ beautiful Parc de Sceaux, there were trainers as far as the eye could see, all of them with a different mission in mind.

Some came to get their hands on the mythical Pokémon Volcanion, making its first appearance outside of Osaka and Jersey City.

Others were after shiny Pokémon like Carbink, Frigibax, Arctibax and Baxcalibur, and costumed Pokémon such as a dapper Pikachu with a top hat or a version of Falinks dressed up like a train. But it wasn’t all about catching ’em all.

A few attendees got engaged. Several couples popped the question in the mascot meet-and-greet tent, presided over by a life-sized Snorlax and giant Eevee. For Kabongo, this is what Pokémon GO Fests are about.

“I really want to emphasize this between the community, because I’m a marketer, and I think marketing has a very anthropological approach. It’s all about understanding the correlation between people and the products.”

The diversity was staggering. Parents brought children in Pikachu costumes, pensioners roamed with eyes glued to phones, and groups of twenty-somethings stood in huddles to trade Pokémon and discuss which habitat to hit up next.

The park was divided into several habitats. The Moonless Volcano area, for example, hosted fire and steel Pokémon like Numel and Houndoom, while the Hypnotic Tundra held ice-types like Piplup and Spheal.

Missions, meanwhile, rewarded bonuses such as lures, Pokémon candy, raid passes, and Pokémon encounters. But GO Fests are more than chances to hoover up content. It’s the atmosphere that makes the event.

While you don’t have to be in the park to experience Pokémon GO Fest 2025, there’s nothing like being there.

The biggest queue formed outside of the merch tent. It was bursting with t-shirts and plushies, which could then be signed by Pokémon GO artists and animators stationed at a stall nearby.

It’s little wonder each player spends, on average, about $715 at these events. In total, 2024’s GO Fest in Madrid generated $40 million in revenue. That’s an astonishing amount of financial engagement for a game that launched in 2016.

“Look, I have worked on many games before,” says animation director Kaan Kayimoglu. “You have a shelf life. So when you ship the game, you can’t do anything with it. You can’t do some patches, you know. Yes, like minimal content, but that’s it. But in Pokémon GO, you see people playing, liking it, and everyone all over the world comes here and plays.”

That ranges from lone players to influencers with millions of followers, like Pinku Kiwi and Jamie Jo. “This event’s good,” said content creator May Naidoo of TikTok channel MayPlaysTV. “My only problem is just the weather, and they can’t really control that.”

Pokemon GO Fest 2025 Dates

Go Fest 2025 ran from Saturday 28th June, 2025 to Sunday 29th June, 2025. It started at 10am CET and ended at 6pm CET on both days.

It reached a scorching 91 degrees in Paris, with trainers huddling under the shade of trees and leaving great swathes of deserted grass to bake in the sun. It was the only uncomfortable part of an otherwise smooth show that’s well and truly banished the growing pains of earlier productions.

So, where does the game go from here? For Kabongo, there’s all the time in the world to decide. “It’s kind of like something a bit eternal,” he says. “I don’t that I don’t think that Pokémon GO will ever stop to be honest. Like, it would never die.”

“I can see it continuing to grow because as I was telling you, it’s not just about the game. This game allows you to make friends and connect on an emotional level with people. We’ve seen people getting engaged, friendships being made. 
So yeah, I think we can carry on like this for years.”