Niantic teases Pokémon Go's 10th anniversary: "Next year is going to be a Pokémon fan's dream come true"

After each chat and returning to hunting Shiny Frigibaxes, and finishing the new Volcanion Special Research, we’ve come a long way.

According to Michael Steranka, Pokémon Go’s senior product director, next year's decade-marking celebrations will be "a Pokémon fan's dream come true".

Steranka has been part of the Niantic team and working his way up since 2017, a year after Go’s original launch. We got the chance to chat with him at Go Fest.

We first asked about the core vision for the remainder of 2025, of which Steranka replied that Niantic is going to be "very much focused on social in the game", giving players "more opportunities, more reasons to connect with one another".

While being unable to share specifics, he did clarify that there are some "really amazing things that players are going to truly enjoy and be excited to experience".

It was then, however, that we really got into the meat of it and asked how the 10th-year anniversary plans were coming along, which was when Steranka started expressing an even higher level of passion for what’s to come.

"Our 10-year anniversary has been one of my personal main projects that I've been focused on over the past year and a half, two years by now," he explains.

"It's such a huge opportunity. There are not many games in the world that can say that they've existed for 10 years, let alone grown over the course of those 10 years, like Pokémon Go has, and we really want to take that opportunity to celebrate with players.

"And so, we have a number of things in development. We have a number of experiences planned, nothing specific I can share right now — but just know that, especially because it's not just Pokémon Go's 10-year anniversary, it's the Pokémon franchise's 30-year anniversary as well, I think next year is going to be a Pokémon fan's dream come true, basically."

Hearing that years’ worth of time has already been put into Pokémon Go’s milestone event should be a relief to players, given all of the teams Steranka coordinates with in his role on the day-to-day.

Even on Go Fest 2025 itself, Steranka spoke about how "almost every single team at the company touches Go Fest in some way, shape or form".

When talking about new features, like the Crowned forms of Zacian and Zamazenta, for example, he discussed how his team worked with Niantic’s "game designers to design the holistic experience, whether it's in the park or in the city or the greater experience", along with working with the marketing team to make sure the proper information is conveyed to players.

Also including the "player experience team [being] on site, to help with any technical troubleshooting", Steranka laid out that the "entire organisation" contributes in some way — which coincides with "balancing with a long-term vision and content of the game" itself.

Altogether, the kind of undertaking for any game event in terms of next year’s Go Fest and regular gameplay — much less a 10th-anniversary celebration — requires spinning a lot of plates.

So, it’s a relief to hear that Pokémon Go’s director has been giving the game’s big birthday the time it needs to cook just right across all the chefs taking part.

That same enthusiasm and careful planning appear to be the case with Niantic’s local teams, as well.

After all, while each Go Fest sees regular big names on the global level like Steranka turn up, it also gives the developer’s local teams the chance to show their stuff by hosting the event, along with sharing how they’ve been engaging with their communities and what they’ve got planned.

In the case of Go Fest 2025: Paris, we got to hear about this from Moise Kabongo — Pokémon Go’s country marketing manager for France. In addition to hearing Kabongo expressing how the community in France "[has] been growing massively", we asked about his team’s own plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary.

While Kabongo couldn’t disclose any details either, he could reassure us that "the communities in France and all the countries will definitely be very excited", along with the prediction that "the community will keep growing as much as they’ve been over the past months".

"We’ll just have to wait a bit and see, but trust me, we’re really looking forward to next year."

Kabongo also mirrored much of the rest of Niantic’s enthusiasm for the game going forward, despite what could easily be argued about a live-service game of its age.

When any game reaches a long lifespan as Pokémon Go has, it’s easy to worry gameplay and content output might become stagnant.

After all, even Steranka mentioned to us in his interview how "it only gets harder and harder as the years go by" to "strike a tricky fine balance" of "giving lots of fun things for our most dedicated die-hard players to enjoy on a regular basis, while not also overwhelming maybe more casual players, or people coming in for the first time".

That self-awareness seems to have provided Pokémon Go with added longevity, since it has given Niantic the chance to take steps back and "make sure people have an opportunity to breathe", and letting the team do the same by "[improving] the baseline experience of the game" instead.

As Steranka also interestingly put it: "Pokémon Go never stays constant, right? We always want to adapt with what we're sensing from the player base at any given time."

The recent Scopely acquisition of Pokémon Go, which took place at the end of May, has been said by Steranka to offer "nothing but upside for [Niantic]", since the new owner’s desire is to "just empower [the] team to do the things [they’ve] always wanted to do".

With the deal being so fresh, it’s likely we won’t see the long-term impact of the Scopely acquisition for a while.

Nevertheless, Kabongo said, "The Pokémon Company and the Pokémon Go Team is very dedicated to keeping improving the gameplay for the years to come," even adding, "so I can definitely see Pokémon Go lasting forever."

If Steranka’s continued vision and Scopely’s mentioned empowerment work out, hopefully Kabongo’s words can come true.

While we wait to see what next year has in store, and the future beyond that, why not try our quiz below?

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