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Get ready, trainers: Pokémon GO Fest is once again taking over Grant Park from Friday, June 5, through Saturday, June 7.
It’s been nine years since the first Pokémon GO Fest in Chicago back in 2017, and that was, well, a fiasco. The debut festival was defined by network crashes, refunds and complete chaos. This year, though, the fest is slated to improve past mistakes with updates like eliminating fencing around Grant Park to allow for an open format that encourages exploration.
There are separate morning and afternoon experiences at Grant Park each day, as well as full-day, city-wide experiences from 9am to 6pm on Thursday through Sunday. The morning park experience runs from 9am to 1pm, before the afternoon session from 2 to 6pm.
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Tickets are $33 and include one park session of event gameplay and a full day of citywide gameplay. Participants can also purchase add-ons to level up the experience by extending the duration of their city-wide gameplay, securing an exclusive collectible item, earning additional in-game rewards and more.
Tickets for Saturday’s park experience are sold out, but there are still tickets for all other days’ events. Check out the Pokémon GO Fest ticketing page for the latest information.
The festival coincides with the wildly popular Pokémon Fossil Museum exhibit at the Field Museum, where fans can see how iconic creatures like Archeops and Aerodactyl size up to real-world artifacts like the fossils of Sue the T. rex.
The GO Fest-to-Fossil Museum pipeline will be in full swing this weekend. Just be sure to secure your tickets to the exhibit in advance.