‘I attended Pokémon Go Fest for the first time and had my jaw on the floor’
The festival brought all Pokémon fans to Copenhagen for a three-day hunt and I tried my best to catch them all
14:16, 29 Jun 2026
I jetted off to Copenhagen and attended Pokémon Go Fest for the first time
It has been 10 years since Pokémon Go was launched. At the time, the augmented reality (AR) mobile game went viral and sent people across the globe into frenzy catching virtual Pokémon in the real world. Since then, the app has upgraded and added many more features and each year, the game developer hosts various events, including in-person festivals and tours.
To celebrate this year’s 10th anniversary of the game, the company Niantic Labs hosted three Pokémon Go Fest in three cities – Tokyo, Chicago and Copenhagen – and without a doubt, I decided to go to the Danish capital for two days of Pokémon hunt.
The Go Fest offers a park experience and a city experience, so to reactivate my Pokémon Go muscle memory, I spent my first day at Fælledparken. There were tents dotted around the area but the first thing I spotted was the humongous inflatable Pikachu, and the merchandise store was just nearby.
People were serious about this event and many of them dressed up for it. I saw a content creator doing livestream in his handmade Mewtwo costume, a man with an Eevee cap and a boy in a Charizard costume. As for myself, I dressed up as a Pokéball in my Stine Goya (Danish designer) red jacket and a yellow Izipizi sunglasses. I also came prepared with a power bank, and this one from Burga kept my phone running till the end of the day.
Throughout the day I was walking in the park catching Pokémons but on the app, there were virtual “gyms” for players to join and battle. If you didn’t have the app with you, it’s quite a sight when you bumped into a group of strangers standing at the same place and swiping their phones non-stop.
“What are they doing?” was the question in my mind for the first day, because I had no idea. Near the end of the morning session, I came across a massive group of players (who looked like they were in a glitch to me), holding their phones up and putting it down and repeating it for three times. They applauded each other without a word and they dispersed.
Turns out, it was a special “raid” and some 2,000 people were battling a Mega Mewtwo X and Mega Mewtwo Y. I spoke to Christina, a dedicated Pokémon Go fan from Germany and she explained to me the fun of attending a Pokémon Go Fest. She said: “If you have watched the anime, you’d remember Ash and his friends visited different ‘dojos’ [or as we call it, gyms] and battle against other trainers. We are doing the same here with our phones.
“It is a very fun and unique way to bring the community together, and to see that happening in person, it is amazing.”
When the game was first launched, it was not uncommon to see people out and about on the hunt for Pokémons and making friends along the way. And Pokémon Go Fest brings a close-knit community together.
The second day I decided to go for the city experience. The idea is to follow a route to collect stamps, and you can do a bit of sightseeing while catching Pokémons. Going solo on the experience, I packed with me a water bottle, power bank and a Secrid wallet. The RFID-protected card holder with a mechanism that allows me to slide the cards out with one hand when I was busy catching Pokémons the other. I put my ID, bank cards and hotel key card in, with extra slots for bank notes or memo notes.
The stamp rally route took me to the Lego Store in Tivoli Gardens, the Lego Store in Copenhagen city centre, then the King’s Garden, a riverside Gefion Fountain and finally Faelledparken. It was a 25,000-step day out, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I also managed to join the “Mega Mewtwo raid” at the end and caught a 98% IV Mewtwo with a Copenhagen background [pardon the lingo].
All city-based Pokémon Go Fest have completed, but there is a Pokémon Go Fest Global in July, and it is free for all players. All you need to do is to download the app and log in during July 11th and 12th from 10am to 7pm local time.
2026 is the new 2016 indeed.
