How To Win Every Showcase in Pokemon GO

With the Season of Wonders update, we actually got a bunch of new showcases. The first of which was for Electric Type Pokemon. We were getting more to mostly fill gaps between events, but also because there’s a new reward tied to showcases: if you get the platinum medal for winning showcases, you can get a Professor Pikachu. And, along the way, you can unlock some cosmetic items and a pose for your avatar. The problem is, winning showcases can be a little bit tricky. Luckily, there are some tips on how to win more often.

Save your XXL Pokemon

This sounds pretty obvious, but you should save some XXL Pokemon, if you have space. XXL Pokemon are kinda rare, but they’re definitely more common than shinies, and you only need to save one or two. You don’t need to evolve them either, and you can delete them as soon as the showcase ends and you get your reward. Technically, you can transfer them after you’ve submitted them to a showcase, but I’d kinda recommend against that in case you find a busy showcase with a lot of competition. Luckily, XXL Pokemon are easy to spot, you just need to tap on them and they’ll have a popup saying that they’re HUGE. And, honestly, it’s worth checking every Pokemon you see anyway, in case you find a shiny.

You should especially save a Squirtle. For some reason, Squirtle is the default Pokemon that pops up in showcases, the same way Shadow Articuno always pops back if a Shadow Legendary hasn’t been specifically announced. It seems to pop up whenever there’s a showcase that should accept more than one Pokemon. While this does seem to be fixed, it’s still worth saving Squirtles, just in case.

There doesn’t seem to be a point in saving XXS Pokemon though. We’ve had showcases for a while now and we haven’t had a single XXS showcase.

Guess what’s coming next

You can generally tell what Pokemon will be in a showcase. Okay, sure, I didn’t expect the 1st and 2nd of March to randomly have Biggest Electric Type (and I don’t have an XXL Zekrom) but events normally have showcases and those showcases are almost always related to said events. For example, the fairy event back in February had a Largest Fairy Type event, while the showcases leading up to the Sinnoh Tour featured Sinnoh baby Pokemon. While I have definitely predicted wrong (I assumed we’d see the Sinnoh starters in showcases leading up to the Sinnoh Tour), you can somewhat reasonably guess what will come up.

Enter no matter what

Even if you don’t have an XXL Pokemon, entering an XL Pokemon can go a long way. For some species, the difference between and XL Pokemon and an XXL Pokemon aren’t that great, so you can get away with not finding an XXL. I’ve actually won showcases with a standard Pokemon before, despite not having a big one: I just happened to enter whatever I had, and no one else managed to evolve a Lycanroc in time to enter themselves.

Live in the middle of nowhere

Honestly, this is the real answer. My brother lives in the middle of nowhere and has two showcases nearby that literally no one else ever enters. So he can throw in pretty much any Pokemon and win easily. Meanwhile I live in the middle of town and, weirdly, can only see two showcases as well, and I have to walk to one of them to enter a Pokemon. At the same time, one one I can enter from home is a highly contested one, and I’ll only get 1st place like 1/3 of the time, depending on how boring the current event is. But if you can find a showcase that no one enters, then there’s nothing stopping you from winning – doubly so when you can enter a Pokemon from a distance.

So yeah, if you want to win 100% of the showcases you enter, find an XL Pokemon at minimum and find a showcase which doesn’t get any traffic.