Welcome to the latest One More Catch weekly newsletter, offering you a guide to the days ahead in Pokémon Go.
Phew! What a Go Fest. Hopefully you got the Mewtwo you were after, and if you were hoping for a quiet week to rest up, I regret to inform you Pokémon's biggest mascot takes the spotlight with a week-long Pikachu celebration and the debut of Mega Raichu X and Y on Saturday, alongside the welcome return of Daily Discovery events.
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.
Events in Pokémon Go this week (13th to 19th July)
All times are at your local time, unless otherwise stated.
What to know about this week
Here's the biggest opportunities and observations for the days ahead:
It's a Pikachu-heavy week
Starting immediately after Go Fest Global weekend, the 'Special Anniversary Pikachu Celebration' event features three waves of different Pikachu in the wild and Field Research (Monday to Wednesday, Wednesday to Saturday, Saturday to Monday).
What exactly is coming is hard to gauge, but it looks like almost every costumed Pikachu will be available, with the likes of Leek Duck keeping track as each new wave comes into effect.
Leek Duck
Otherwise, know the following will be in raids all week. Personally, I'm excited to get the World Championships costumes missing from my collection:
- Dapper Pikachu (with red, yellow and blue accents)
- Pikachu wearing a safari hat
- Pikachu wearing a varsity jacket
- Pikachu wearing an amethyst crown
- World Championships Pikachu (2022, 2023, 2024 costumes)
There's also a Go Pass with some decent giveaways, including some 300k or so XP, and most importantly, a Candy Transfer bonus...
Need to have a clear out after Go Fest?
The 'Special Anniversary Pikachu Celebration' Go Pass features a 2x Transfer Candy bonus, which can be increased to 3x with the Deluxe track. There's also an increased chance of XL Candy when transferring, which goes up further with the Deluxe track. Perfect for clearing out the many Go Fest Legendaries in your storage, basically.
Remember, this only kicks in on rank 10, so you might have to play a day or two first - don't transfer anything until that's been unlocked.
Mega Raichu debuts
The highlight of a Pikachu-focused week is the debut of evolution Raichu's Mega X and Y forms in Super Mega Raids.
With the arrival of Mega Raichu Y in particular, we have a new best Electric-type attacker in town (apologies to Zeraora, which debuted in the game just last week during Go Fest - your reign was short-lived).
It'll be well worth chasing, then, but if you're purely after the 'dex entry, as per other recent Super Mega Raids, any Raichu caught will have the first Mega Level unlocked to make that simple.
Otherwise, you can Mega Evolve a Raichu already in your inventory if you prefer - it just will take more Super Mega Energy to get there. (And if you plan to use one of the new costumed Pikachu from this week, make sure it can evolve into Raichu first before you invest in it - some can evolve, some can't.)
Daily Discoveries and Mega Lucario are back
A small PSA that Daily Discoveries return this week now Go Fest Global is over, so be sure to tune into Spotlight Hour on Thursday (it's Zubat and 2x Catch XP), make use of Friendship Friday, Max Monday's Rare Candy XL bonus, and so on.
Also, since Mega Lucario had a short run in Mega Raids the week before 'Road of Legends', it'll be back in raids Monday and Tuesday to make up for it. It's the best Fighting-type in the game, even with the recent arrival of Mega Mewtwo X, so worth getting hold of.
What's new in Pokémon and Pokémon Go?
Here's a roundup of the biggest stories from the week:
- The 10th anniversary week didn't pass without celebration, or incident. There was surprisingly little from Niantic for the actual day itself (save for some anniversary artwork from Yusuke Kozaki, as is tradition), but on Thursday, the game took to New York City to recreate the announcement video where huge crowds of players were battling Mewtwo in Times Square.
- As part of the event, the game handed out its first guaranteed hundo for those who caught Mewtwo at the end of the night - with the seemingly-exclusive catch sparking complaints among the community:
Matthew Reynolds
- Elsewhere, owner Scopely took to its comms to reveal some big stats from the 10 years of Pokémon Go, including that it's reached 800 million players, has seen one trillion Pokémon caught to date, and more:
- Speaking of Scopely: Pokémon Go developer Niantic is now Scopely Explore.
- It's going to take time for the new name to replace Niantic in my muscle memory, so please excuse any mentions of Niantic slipping through in the weeks to come.
Matthew Reynolds
- For those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, from Saturday, 18th July (this weekend) Pokémon's National Trust collab continues with dedicated location backgrounds, raids and Timed Research at 27 properties.
- I'm quite excited to start collecting these Location Backgrounds, and it's neat to see the UK get highlighted in this way.
- Also, a reminder that the National Trust walking trails are also at these sites, and are running until the same end date of 6th September.
Matthew Reynolds
- Finally, Pokémon Champions saw a new season mid-week, though it was fairly uneventful - no new Pokémon, Regulation Set M-B continues, and official patch notes says that "certain bugs have been fixed", which is as vague as it gets. The good news is Season M-5 should have more going on.
Matthew Reynolds
One More Catch notes
The site celebrated Pokémon Go's 10th anniversary with two features, one delving into what it was like to play in 2026...
Matthew Reynolds
...and another asking prominent writers and content creators what's kept them coming back over the decade. Thanks to Leek Duck's Richie, Serebii's Joe Merrick, G47IX, MattSimplified, IGN's Tom Phillips, Polygon's Julia Lee and Jupiter Hadley for taking part!
Matthew Reynolds
The site has otherwise been filled with Go Fest Global guides, which doesn't make sense to mention as many are no longer relevant, but I've given the Gold Bottle Cap explainer a big refresh for the best 2026 picks:
Matthew Reynolds
Meanwhile, as part of the 10th anniversary week, I launched a couple of new site features and a 25% discount sale. Since this newsletter is going out later than usual (apologies - it's been a very full week, and Monday was just a little too busy to get it out the door!) I'm keeping the sale running one more day (until end of Tuesday) if you wanted to get involved:
- 25% Good Supporter discount (£10 / ~$13 off a year)
- 25% Great Supporter discount (£16.25 / ~$21.75 off a year)
Finally, congrats to media veterans and friends of the site Alex Donaldson and Tom Orry for launching Respec, a new multiplatform independent outlet.
The launch post contains the phrase "no silly bollocks" when it comes to its headline approach, and the duo ultimately "just want to offer good gaming coverage for people who love the hobby and the people in the industry who make it all possible". Sounds great to me - make sure you lend it your support with follows and bookmarks, as it'll be one to watch:
Alex Donaldson and Tom Orry
That's the end of this week's newsletter - as usual, we wrap with a reminder that you can subscribe to One More Catch for bonus articles, extra site functionality, and as a way to show your support for the newsletter and site in general. See the above links for a limited-time discount until the end of Tuesday.
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Hope you have a great week!
