Pokemon GO’s First Ever Event Is A Halloween-Themed Affair, Begins October 26

Pokemon GO developer Niantic has announced via a new trailer that Halloween is coming to the mobile game on October 26, bringing with it boosted encounter rates for certain critters and more Candy to help Trainers level up their no-doubt-by-now-massive collection of creatures.

From the aforementioned date until November 1, players will earn double Candy rewards for every Pokemon they catch and send to Professor Willow, meaning you’ll get six for doing the former, two for the latter. What’s more, a small selection of Pokemon that Niantic has deemed to be suitably spooky will be encountered more often than usual. Seven have made the list, including Zubat, Golbat, Drowzee, Ghastly, Haunter, Gengar and Hypno.

We can’t imagine too many of you will be ecstatic about Zubat or Drowzee being more prevalent out in the wild – neither is exactly a rare sighting as it is, so including them feels like a lot like Niantic rubbing salt in the wound.

How successful the event will be, we’ll have to see, but it’s no secret that the augmented reality title has seen a huge drop-off in players since releasing earlier this year, with many blaming Niantic’s lack of content updates as the reason for the dip.

Just one new feature has been added since July, that being a Buddy System that allows players to pick their favorite Pokemon to follow them around on their adventures. It was also recently announced that Pokemon GO will be available on Apple Watch in a future update. How much that will help to boost player numbers remains to be seen though.