Niantic announces global real-world events for Pokemon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Niantic has announced a number of its planned real-world events for Pokemon GO, Ingress, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

Pokemon GO's events in 2019 were unsurprisingly huge, with 64,000+ trainers attending the 4-day Chicago event (triple the participation of the 2018 Chicago event) and 39,000+ attending the 3-day Montreal event.

Seemingly the biggest of them all, though, took place in Dortmund, which saw a whopping 86,000+ participating players. More than 200,000 trainers played in the region of Dortmund during the 4-day event, and do I really have to point out that that's a lot?

"Niantic's large-scale real-world events have had a true and clear positive economic impact on tourism, bringing people from around the world together for a weekend of adventure", said Michael Steranka, Senior Manager, Live Events at Niantic. Chicago 2019's attending players spent an estimated $120 million around the city, Dortmund and Ruhr region players spent an estimated $56 million, and Montreal players spent an estimated $71 million. Again, that's an awful lot.

"We were incredibly impressed by the number and quality of entries in the #NianticLive2020 program and, as a result, are excited to announce the addition of Liverpool, Philadelphia, and St. Louis to our live events schedule in 2020."

Here is the current schedule for 2020 Pokemon GO events:

• Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taichung - February 6-9
• Pokemon GO Safari Zone St. Louis - March 27-29
• Pokemon GO Safari Zone Liverpool - April 17-19
• Pokemon GO Safari Zone Philadelphia - May 8-10

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For fans of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the game's second Fan Festival will take place later this year. More details are set to arrive soon. Here's a link to the current list of events for Niantic's Ingress. Niantic is yet to reveal its planned events for the second half of the year. 

Clearly this is all super impressive, suggesting that Pokemon GO in particular still has an incredibly active, enthusiastic community across the globe. If you've not touched it since the summer of 2016, you'll find Pokemon GO available from both the App Store and Google Play.