Pokémon GO Twitch Rivals: Mobile Showdown Announced for Next Week

Twitch Rivals will be partnering with Pokemon GO this week for a two-part competition.

Niantic Labs announced the event on Thursday, Oct. 7 via a tweet posted to their verified Twitter page. It was accompanied by a post on the game’s official news blog outlining what fans could expect during the stream.

“It’ll be an exciting challenge that’ll test these Trainers’ overall skills!” Niantic wrote.

Here’s what you need to know.

Pokémon GO Twitch Rivals: Mobile Showdown Explained

The event will kick off on Wednesday, Oct. 13 starting at 6 p.m. ET (3 p.m. PT).

Fans will be able to watch their favorite popular streamers partake in a dual-phase contest taking advantage of the traditional aspects of Pokemon GO—catching Pokemon and battling with them. Though the exact details of the event have yet to be revealed, Niantic did drop a news post earlier with a bit of preliminary information ahead of the event.

Streamers will be teaming up and working together in order to accomplish their goals of catching, accessing, and then battling Pokemon. They’ll be using “brand-new” accounts that operate under “unique gameplay settings” to keep things fair.

The first phase, unsurprisingly, involves catching Pokemon. Trainers will have one hour to catch as many powerful Pokemon as they can to use in the competition. The Pokemon they catch are critical to their success in the second half of the game. As far as we know, there are no distinct restrictions on the types of Pokemon that can be caught.

The second phase, trainers will be using the Pokemon they previously caught in the first phase to battle amongst each other “in a round-robin tournament.” Every trainer will have a chance to battle every other trainer at least once within the competition. “Specific rules” will also be added to the matches to encourage a further depth of strategy in the game.

Niantic encouraged fans to show their support with the hashtags “#PokemonGO” and “#GOBattle” during the stream.