Pokemon Go New Year’s Eve 2021 event: Date & time, Slowpoke, costumes

Pokemon Go is rounding out 2020 with a New Year’s Eve celebration event featuring some special outfits for Slowpoke, Eevee, and Pikachu.

After a tumultuous year, many people are looking forward to the end of 2020. Whatever your plans for December 31, Niantic are making sure there’s something to celebrate with a New Year’s Eve event for trainers to enjoy.

The star of the show during this special event is Slowpoke. Late to the party as always, the lazy Pokemon will appear wearing 2020 glasses — but if you evolve it into a Slowbro, it’ll catch up with the times and wear 2021 glasses instead!

Niantic

Slowpoke will be the focus of the New Year’s Eve event in Pokemon Go.

Pokemon Go NYE event features

A number of familiar Pokemon wearing party hats will be appearing during the event, including Pichu, Pikachu, Raichu, Raticate, Wobbuffet, Wurmple, and Eevee.

• Read More: How to get a Shiny Mew in Pokemon Go

There will also be New Year’s Eve-themed avatar items available in the game’s shop. You can see the full list of features below:

• Certain species of Pokemon will be wearing festive costumes to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
• Slowpoke wearing 2020 glasses will appear in a number of ways: in the wild, in raids, hatching from 2km Eggs, and after you complete Field Research tasks.
• If you evolve Slowpoke wearing 2020 glasses, you’ll get a Slowbro wearing 2021 glasses.
• Wynaut will hatch from 2km Eggs, and if you’re lucky, you might even find a Shiny Wynaut.
• Raticate, Wobbuffet and Wurmple wearing party hats will appear in one-star raids. They’ll also be joined by Klink and Espurr.
• Eevee wearing a party hat will be available as a Field Research reward encounter.
• New avatar items, the 2021 glasses and the New Year’s Party Hat, will be available in the in-app shop from Wednesday, December 30, 2020, at 1 PM PST.
• Finally, boxes will contain different items than usual during the event.

If that wasn’t enough, the Pokemon Go New Year’s Eve event also includes some bonuses. Specifically, trainers will receive two lots of Hatch Candy and Hatch Stardust, and 1/2 Hatch Distance when Eggs are placed in an Incubator during the event.

The Pokemon Company

Slowpoke will wear 2020 glasses, but its evolution Slowbro will wear 2021 glasses.

How to get Pikachu wearing a New Year’s hat

As well as Pokemon wearing standard party hats, there will be appearances from Pichu, Pikachu, and Raichu wearing extra-special New Year’s hats during the event.

Here’s how to get your hands on them:

• If you want a Pichu wearing a New Year’s hat, they’ll be hatching from 2km Eggs.
• Pikachu wearing a New Year’s hat can be found in the wild and after completing Field Research tasks, or by evolving Pichu wearing a New Year’s hat.
• Finally, if you want a Raichu wearing a New Year’s hat, the only way to get one will be to evolve a Pikachu wearing a New Year’s hat.

Pokemon Go NYE event start date and time

As the name suggests, the New Year’s Eve event starts on Thursday, December 31, 2020, at 10 PM local time and runs until Monday, January 4, 2020, at 10 PM local time.

• Read more: Pokemon Go players fed up with “lazy” Pikachu hat

This means you’ll have four days to complete the challenges and unlock the special costume variants of Slowpoke, Pikachu, Eevee, and the rest of the featured Pokemon during this event.

If you’re already looking ahead to 2021, you’ll want to check out our January Community Day guide which will see Machop become the star of the show for one day only.