This week in Pokémon Go (13th to 19th April): Plan-et ahead

Welcome to the latest One More Catch weekly newsletter, offering you a guide to the week ahead in Pokémon Go.

There's plenty to look forward to. A packed 'Sustainability Week' features a triple whammy of debuts (and the return of dreaded biomes), plus there's the ever-enjoyable Hatch Day event on Saturday. And for the Gen 3 heads out there, Groudon is back in Raids.

So here's a snapshot of everything coming to Pokémon Go in the days ahead, the biggest opportunities available, and a roundup of Pokémon news and site updates you may have missed.

This week in Pokémon Go (13th to 19th April)

All times are at your local time, unless otherwise stated.

Here is each day of the week, one-by-one:

Monday 13th April

• Nothing new today!
• Also today:
  • Fast Track Monday (midnight to midnight), where points in monthly and event-specific Go Passes are doubled
  • Max Monday (6am to 9pm), with additional Power Spots throughout the day, including a focus on Drilbur this week

Tuesday 14th April

• 'Sustainability Week' event starts - 10am to Monday, 20th April at 8pm
  • New debuts:
    • Silicobra (and evolution Sandaconda) in "desert-like areas"
    • Costumed Galarian Corsola (wearing pink sunglasses)
    • Shiny Toedscool "in forested and grassy areas"
• Different Pokémon will appear on Routes during the event:
  • Today until Thursday, 16th: Togetic, costumed Galarian Corsola
  • Thursday, 16th to Saturday, 18th: Trubbish, costumed Galarian Corsola
  • Saturday, 18th to Monday, 20th: Lapras, costumed Galarian Corsola
• Increased shiny chance for Togetic, Trubbish, Lapras, and Castform
• 7km Eggs refresh: Lapras, Togepi, costumed Galarian Corsola, Castform, Trubbish
  • Increased shiny chance for Galarian Corsola and Castform in Eggs
• Wild encounters include Seedot, Castform, Silicobra, Wiglett, Toedscool and more
  • Toedscool, Wiglett and Silicobra will appear more frequently in their biomes
• New Field Research
• New Go Pass for £5 / $5: features encounters with event-themed Pokémon (with "even more" on the Deluxe pass) and a variety of items in both tracks
  • Progression unlocks 1/2 Egg Hatch distance, 2x XP for spinning a PokéStop (increases to 3x XP in the Deluxe track)
  • Deluxe track also gets an event-themed avatar pose

• Also today:
  • Showcase Tuesday (10am to 8pm), where PokéStop Showcases feature "up to 20 different categories" today
  • Go Battle League change (9pm UK / 4pm EST / 1pm PST)
    • Master League, Spring Cup: Great League Edition

Wednesday 15th April

• 'Sustainability Week' event continues
• Raid refresh (until next Wednesday)
  • Five-star: Groudon
  • Mega Raids: Mega Alakazam
  • Shadow Raids at weekends throughout April: Shadow Latios
• Raid hour (6pm to 7pm)
  • Groudon (can be shiny)

Thursday 16th April

• 'Sustainability Week' event continues
  • In Routes from 10am until Saturday, 18th: Trubbish, costumed Galarian Corsola
• Also today:
  • Go Battle Thursday (midnight to midnight), with up to 4x Stardust when winning matches, with the number of sets increasing to 10

Friday 17th April

• 'Sustainability Week' event continues
• Also today:
  • Friendship Friday (midnight to midnight), with boosts to in-person trades, including an extra Special Trades, increased Lucky Trade chance, up to 10% reduction in Stardust cost, and guaranteed 2 Candy XL per trade

Saturday 18th April

• 'Sustainability Week' event continues
  • In Routes from 10am until Monday, 20th: Lapras, costumed Galarian Corsola
• 'Replay: Riolu Hatch Day' - 11am to 5pm
  • Riolu will hatch more frequently from 2km Eggs (with increased 2km Eggs from PokéStops)
  • Bonuses include:
    • Increased chance of hatching shiny Riolu
    • 1/2 Egg Hatch Distance, 2x Candy and 2x XP from hatching Eggs
    • Free themed Field Research with an Incubator and 5,000 XP
    • £1.99 / $1.99 Timed Research, with a 1/4 Egg Hatch distance bonus, 1 Star Piece, 2 Super Incubators "and more"

Sunday 19th April

• 'Sustainability Week' event continues
• Also today:
  • Double-Time Sunday (midnight to midnight), where regular Incense and all Lure Modules durations are doubled (but not Daily Adventure Incense)

Opportunities this week

It's a busy week thanks to two decent events, with lots of spawn changes for 'Sustainability Week' in particular. Let's get stuck in:

• New debuts are the big focus in 'Sustainability Week', with a triple whammy of a new debut (Silicobra), a new shiny debut (Toedscool), and a new costumed Pokémon (Galarian Corsola with pink sunglasses).
  • Two of these likely involve the dreaded 'biomes' feature (Silicobra in deserts, Toedscool in forests and grassy areas) which means they will only spawn on very specific parts of the map. That said, the official blog post says they will "appear in the wild" as well as "more frequently in their natural biomes", so it's possible they might spawn everywhere, unless they're considering biomes as the wild. It's as clear as mud, basically, and we won't know the lay of the land until the event rolls out.
    • If they are exclusive to biomes, use your local communities to find spawning locations, or a tool like this unofficial Pikmin Bloom map which allows you to easily flag biome information shared across Niantic games like Pokémon Go.

• Costumed Galarian Corsola, meanwhile, is suggested to only be in 7km Eggs and Routes, so at least there's two ways of finding one. And yes, they can be shiny.
• It should be noted these debuts aren't necessarily meta-relevant Pokémon for battling, so consider them for fleshing out your Pokédex and / or bragging rights.
• The 'Replay: Riolu Hatch Day', meanwhile, does offer a good Pokémon for battling when evolved into Lucario, which is one of the best Fighting-type creatures in Pokémon Go, especially with its Mega Evolved form (the energy of which you won't get during the event), so this is an excellent opportunity to hatch one with decent stats, and hopefully a shiny on top. In other words, definitely make time for this event.

• Hatch Days, with their longer hours and reliance on spinning PokéStops, make for one of the more flexible and enjoyable event types. Though I have a couple of strong, fully powered Lucario, I'm looking forward to joining in on this one too.
• Buying the £1.99 / $1.99 Timed Research for the 1/4 Egg Hatch distance bonus if probably overkill since you get 1/2 distance for free, but if you're playing the event in earnest and fancy hatching 2km Eggs in just 500m, it's probably good value (especially if you want to quickly clear out any 10km Eggs taking up space too).
• Finally, this week's raid refresh sees Groudon in five-star raids from Wednesday. As with Kyogre last week, this Gen 3 Ground-type has been around for a long time, but it remains an excellent Ground-type attacker, especially when you factor in the Primal Reversion version (which it can evolve into with the relevant energy, which doesn't drop this week).
  • In short, if you don't have a Groudon, be sure to get one - and if you do, then use the likes of the Raid Hour and increased appearances throughout the week as an opportunity for extra Candy and XL Candy.

What's new in Pokémon and Pokémon Go?

Here's a catch-up on news from Pokémon Go and the wider world of Pokémon:

• For those in the US, Pokémon Go's Major League Baseball collab is returning for the 2026 season, with the same bonus PokéStops and chance of catching a Location Background Pikachu. The same was recently confirmed for Japan's baseball league, and if you're able to visit an eligible game, be sure to grab several as they're useful trading fodder. Here's a video from last year's run as for what to expect:

• As rumoured, we're getting that Lechonk Community Day in May, so look forward to that. Other event news includes 'Steeled Resolve' with the debut of Orthworm (complete with shiny) at the end of April, and 'Entei Shadow Raid Day' in early May.

• A costumed Caterpie is coming to Pokémon Go Fest 2026. It's not quite a cowboy hat, but we'll take it:

• Go Tour Kalos Masterwork Research 'Sparkle and Shine' has reached the point where Shiny Diancie can be encountered, assuming you're speeding through it as fast as possible. Me? I'm only just on step three of 10, where the recent Tinkatink Community Day helped me tick off the 'catch 100 Fairy-type Pokémon' objective with ease.

‘Sparkle and Shine’ Masterwork Research steps in Pokémon Go

Diancie that.

One More CatchMatthew Reynolds

• Elsewhere, Pokémon Champions launched last week in a less than satisfactory state. Amongst a bunch of issues that are being worked on (see Nintendo Life for the full list) is the weird case of the Switch 2 version only outputting in 1080p when docked until you remove the console and reinsert it again. I asked Tom Morgan of Digital Foundry what was going on in a story on the site, and you can see a before and after in the following video:

One More Catch notes

Here's a quick round-up of other site posts, updates, and publication-related musings:

• Pokémon Champions was the big focus on the site last week, with a bunch of guides going live - including how to link Champions to Home and source various currencies including VP and Training Tickets - as well as an update to the roster guide to account for the launch line-up of creatures. And yes, the Mystery Gift feature returns:

Pokémon Champions Mystery Gift codes

All available giveaways for the competitive Pokémon game.

One More CatchMatthew Reynolds

• As for what's to come, there is more Pokémon Champions #content planned, as well as the (belated) quarterly Behind the Catch blog entry for Great Supporters.
• Finally, something likely relevant to your interests: I took part in mobilegamer.biz's Critics' Week, where I talked about how Monster Hunter Now is secretly Niantic's best game. If you were curious about giving it a go, the Capcom co-developed title compliments Pokémon Go really well, and when things quieten down in Pokémon land I might write more about it for One More Catch, too.

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Hope you have a great week!