Pokémon Go Spotlight Hours, explained – What are they, and how do they work?

There’s a new Pokémon Go Spotlight Hour each week. These events only happen for an hour, but they’re a good chance for you to catch a particular Pokémon and add it to your collection. The Pokémon featured in this hourly event varies, and how these events work can be vague. This guide will cover what the Pokémon Go Spotlight Hours are and how they work in the mobile game.

What is a Pokémon Go Spotlight Hour

A Pokémon Go Spotlight Hour event is when for a single hour, a particular Pokémon spawns the entire time. At the start of the event, the Pokémon takes over all the spawn locations in the game, being the only one available that you can find in the wild. Of course, you can still participate in raids or receive different Pokémon from Field Research tasks or distinct encounters for completing Special Research tasks, but the Spotlight Hour Pokémon dominates all in-game wild spawns.

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The Spotlight Hour event only lasts for an hour, giving you a limited window to find this Pokémon or allowing you to avoid it if you’re trying to hunt down others for an event.

How the Pokémon Go Spotlight Hours work

The Pokémon Go Spotlight Hour happens every Tuesday from 6 PM to 7 PM in your local time zone. The featured Pokémon for the event is always announced ahead of time, with a strict schedule. There will also be a boosted reward for the event. For example, Wingull will be in the Spotlight for the event, and all players will receive twice as much XP for catching Pokémon. Although you might not be hunting down Wingull, it’s a good opportunity to boost your Pokémon Go level. You can choose to double down on these effects by activating more items, such as Starpieces or Lucky Eggs.

Any Pokémon featured in this event does have an increased spawn rate, but they do not have an increased shiny rate. Although the odds of encountering a shiny Pokémon remain the same because it’s spawning more often, you have more chances to encounter a shiny version because of how many you can find in a short time.

The Pokémon Go Spotlight Hours are brief but consistent. We recommend checking to see what Pokémon will be in the spotlight before the event starts every Tuesday, making it the perfect time to acquire more candy for a particular Pokémon or receive XL candy.