Everything You Need to Know About the Upcoming Pokemon GO Gym Rework

Pokémon GO Gym rework (update) is a set of meta shifting changes to Pokémon GO gyms, announced by John Hanke and planned for Spring of 2017.

Players data mining efforts in the previous months discovered a lot about the upcoming gym rework in Pokémon GO. This page documents everything that is currently known and the history of the upcoming gym update.

There is no official release date for the Pokémon GO gym rework.

Everything we know about the upcoming Gym rework

Through various instances of data mining and through Niantic’s official posts and statements, here’s everything we know about the upcoming Pokémon GO Gym rework.

Ready for raiding

Thanks to the magic of data mining, we now know that the following mechanics are part of the upcoming update:

Raid encounters will randomly take place in your local area
Pokémon will get hungry while fighting
Real time notifications will let you know that a raid is happening nearby

Note: The list of notifications is in the next section

These features were first discovered in the app’s network traffic and later confirmed in our 0.63.1 data mine:

.ACTIVITY_DEFEAT_RAID_POKEMON

.ACTIVITY_FEED_BERRY

.ACTIVITY_SEARCH_GYM

It’s not yet clear what effect will feeding your Pokémon have, but it is speculated that Pokémon hunger will be used to decay stagnant gyms. Interestingly, the “search gym” activity is also a mystery currently.

Real time notifications

Real time alerts (push notifications) will be used to notify players that a raid is taking place in their vicinity. Same technology is used to alert Trainers about the status of their Pokémon.

These messages were discovered so far:

Gym rework notifications
Notification	Variant
Nearby raid is starting	There’s a raid about to start near you!
	A raid’s going to start nearby!
	Nearby raid starting soon!
Pokémon won a battle	{0} defended the Gym!
	{0} was victorious in battle!
	{0} has triumphed over your opponents!
Pokémon lost a battle	{0} lost a battle!
	{0} was defeated in battle!
	{0} fainted at the Gym!
Gym removal	{0} has fought hard and returned!
	{0} is back after a hard battle!
	{0} was forced off the Gym!
Pokémon is hungry	{0} is hungry!
	{0} needs a pick-me-up!
	{0} wants a berry!

Limit for same species Pokémon in the gym

Together with the new raid features discovered in 0.63.1, one balance change was also found. Niantic is limiting the number of same-species Pokémon that can be deployed in a single gym.

In an effort to fight “pure-Blissey” gyms, players will soon be limited to have only 1 or two of the same Pokémon specie in a gym.