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48 free Pokemon Go trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free Pokemon Go trivia questions with answers. Pokémon Go turned the world into a Pokédex in the summer of 2016 and never really went away. This quiz sticks strictly to the mobile game: how a Google Maps April Fools' joke and John Hanke's Ingress grew into Niantic's phenomenon, the launch-week server meltdowns and Guinness records, Team Mystic, Valor and Instinct and their leaders, Professor Willow, Gyms and raids, Buddy Pokémon, Community Day, the Go Fest 2017 disaster in Chicago, Team GO Rocket and Shadow Pokémon, the Go Battle League, the Go Plus gadgets, the strange real-world incidents and bans, and the 2025 sale to Scopely. Easy questions cover which bird stands for Team Mystic and who starred in the first Community Day; the hard ones want the hacking group behind the July 2016 outage, the Korean glitch city and the fan-voted 2026 Community Day Pokémon. Made for players who still remember the three-step glitch. Looking for the anime and main games instead? See our general Pokémon quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the game, Niantic and its events, plus the Bulbapedia encyclopaedia for in-game mechanics, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What real-world technology does Pokémon Go use to place wild Pokémon around the player?
GPS
The game layers the creatures over your position, and an optional AR mode uses the camera and gyroscope to show them as if they were really there.
Q 02On which day in 2014 did Google Maps release the Pokémon Challenge stunt that inspired the game?
April Fools' Day
It was built as an engineer's 20% project; catching all 151 creatures earned players a real "Pokémon Master" business card in the mail.
Q 03In which month of 2016 did Pokémon Go officially launch in Australia, New Zealand and the United States?
July
Server demand hit fifty times the expected traffic, and other regional launches were paused until Niantic could cope.
Q 04Which coffee chain partnered with Pokémon Go in December 2016, turning its US stores into PokéStops and Gyms?
Starbucks
Sprint joined the same deal, and by January 2017 another five thousand of the chain's locations had become Gyms.
Q 05At what trainer level do players first choose between Team Mystic, Valor and Instinct?
5
Switching later requires a Team Medallion from the shop, and you then have to wait a full year before buying another.
Q 06Which Legendary bird represents the blue Team Mystic?
Articuno
Mystic researches evolution, Valor (red) studies strength, and Instinct (yellow) studies breeding.
Q 07Who leads Team Valor?
Candela
She is the oldest of the three team leaders and describes her Trainers as seeking true strength through natural training.
Q 08Which Pokémon, added after launch, hides as another species until you catch it?
Ditto
Its shiny form is notoriously rare because it can only appear via the disguise mechanic.
Q 09Which region's Pokémon were added in the February 2017 update that first expanded the original 151?
Johto
The update added around 100 species plus new Berries and clothing; Hoenn followed in late 2017 alongside the in-game weather system.
Q 10The Buddy Pokémon feature, added in September 2016, rewards you with what for walking a set distance?
Candy
Buddy distances are 1, 3, 5 or 20 km per reward depending on the species, and a 2019 update added Affection hearts and perks.
Q 11Which Pokémon starred in the very first Community Day on January 20, 2018?
Pikachu
Evolving it into Raichu during the three-hour window taught the exclusive move Surf.
Q 12Trading, introduced in June 2018, costs both players which resource?
Stardust
Special trades for shinies and Legendaries cost far more, and traded Pokémon have their IVs re-rolled.
Q 13What was the game's first in-game holiday event, launched in October 2016 and credited with reviving revenue?
Halloween
US usage had fallen 79 percent from its July peak; the event pushed five-day takings from about $10 million to $23 million.
Q 21Since 2020, Pokémon Go players can send Pokémon one-way into which cloud service, Pokémon ___?
Home
Sending a Pokémon there is one of the ways to unlock the Mystery Box that spawns the game's own Mythical, and transfers cannot come back.
Q 22At which 2016 event did John Hanke first unveil the three team leaders?
San Diego Comic-Con
He also apologised for the server meltdown there, admitting 'we weren't provisioned for what happened', and said only about 10 percent of the game's ideas had shipped.
Q 23Before setting out on his own research, Professor Willow worked in the lab of which Pokémon Professor?
Oak
Unlike most professors, Willow does not hand out a starter; he gives new Trainers their first Poké Balls and lets them catch one themselves.
Q 14Which mobile publisher bought Niantic's games division, including Pokémon Go, for $3.5 billion in 2025?
Scopely
The buyer is best known for Monopoly Go! and, a year after the deal closed, renamed the studio Scopely Explore.
Q 15Which franchise was the basis of Niantic's 2019 follow-up game that shut down in January 2022?
Harry Potter
Niantic also announced and then cancelled Transformers: Heavy Metal and Marvel World of Heroes before either launched.
Q 16Who composed the Pokémon Go soundtrack?
Junichi Masuda
The veteran Game Freak director also pushed to debut a brand-new species in the game rather than in a main-series title.
Q 17The Japanese launch was delayed after a sponsorship deal with which fast-food chain leaked?
McDonald's
More than 10 million people downloaded the game on the day it finally arrived in Japan, 1.3 million of them in the first three hours.
Q 18What was the nickname of the mid-2016 bug that left the nearby-Pokémon tracker stuck at maximum footprints?
Three-step glitch
Instead of fixing it, Niantic removed the footprint feature entirely on July 30, 2016, which annoyed players even more.
Q 19Which wearable received an official Pokémon Go companion app in December 2016?
Apple Watch
It only sent alerts about nearby Pokémon; actual catching still meant pulling out your phone.
Q 20The Pokémon Go Plus + sleep-tracking app hands new players which drowsy Pokémon to look after?
Snorlax
That app scores your night as Dozing, Snoozing or Slumbering and had passed 30 million downloads by 2026.
Q 24Which Mythical Pokémon is the only one to have debuted in Pokémon Go rather than a main-series game?
Meltan
Fans nicknamed the hex-nut-headed creature 'Nutto' before its name was revealed, and it uniquely evolves into Melmetal despite being Mythical.
Q 25Eggs from friends' Gifts require which walking distance to hatch?
7 km
PokéStops give 2, 5 and 10 km Eggs, while beating a Team GO Rocket Leader awards a 12 km Strange Egg.
Q 26What is the feature launched in late 2018 that counts steps even while the app is closed?
Adventure Sync
It piggybacks on Apple Health or Google Fit and hands out weekly rewards at 5, 25 and 50 km.
Q 27Niantic's 2023 game Monster Hunter Now was made with which Japanese publisher?
Capcom
It was one of the titles sold off with Pokémon Go in 2025, along with Pikmin Bloom.
Q 28An October 2025 update raised the Pokémon Go maximum trainer level to what?
80
The cap sat at 40 for the game's first four years, then rose to 50 on November 30, 2020, before the October 2025 jump.
Q 29Which Google engineer created the Maps Pokémon stunt and went on to direct Pokémon Go at Niantic?
Tatsuo Nomura
He was born Shi Lei in a village in northeast China, moved to Japan at nine, and later also directed Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now.
Q 30Niantic took its name from what?
A 19th-century whaling ship
The vessel reached San Francisco during the 1840s gold rush, and the company was headquartered in the same city's Ferry Building.