How to Create a New Gym in Pokemon Go

If your area doesn’t have many or any Gyms in Pokemon Go, it’s going to be difficult to earn any PokeCoins, but you can always try to create a new Gym nearby yourself.

How to Create a Gym in Pokemon Go

While you can’t explicitly decide to create a Gym yourself in Pokemon Go, you can submit ideas for Pokestops via the Niantic Wayfarer program available in-game.

To submit a Pokestop idea for Pokemon Go, you need to visit the relevant area in the settings menu, which you can do by;

1. Log in to the game and tap on the red Pokeball icon in the middle of your screen
2. Tap the settings button in the top right-hand corner to access the menu.
3. Scroll down to the AR section of settings, the Pokestop Contribution area is directly below that.

   
4. Provided you meet the requirements for the Niantic Wayfarer program, which I’ll discuss after this section, you can press the New Pokestop button here and start the process
5. You’ll need to submit a name, photo and description of the area, as well as placing a marker on the map.
6. After that, all you need to do is wait to see if the Stop gets approved by the wayfarer community.

Your submitted pokestops, if and when approved, can automatically become Gyms if it’s decided that there are not enough Gyms in the area compared to the total number of Pokestops.

It also doesn’t explicitly have to be that new Pokestop you submit that becomes a Gym. Any nearby pre-existing Pokestop might actually be upgraded to a Gym when the new Pokestop is added to the game, so simply adding new Pokestops might be enough to nudge your area into gaining a Gym or two even if your submission doesn’t end up becoming a Gym.

The amount of Pokestops and Gyms Niantic will accept seems to scale to the number of local players, so rural players may struggle to get more than a single Gym, while players in a city might have plenty of them in sight the moment they open up the game and still be able to submit more Pokestop ideas for their area.

Each Gym will provide you with more chances to earn your daily Pokecoins, so making sure to add more Gyms to an area is definitely something that can benefit you in the long run, given how many things those Pokecoins can be spent to buy.

How to Unlock Niantic Wayfarer

As a forewarning, unlocking Niantic Wayfarer requires at least level 38 in Pokemon Go.

Provided you meet that requirement, the Niantic Wayfarer system will require a Google or Facebook account sign in, following which you’ll be given a guide set of instructions on how to review possible Pokestop locations submitted by others.

You’ll likely actually need to pay at least some attention to this, as you’ll need to complete 10 questions about a set of possible Pokestop locations to be allowed into actually using Niantic Wayfarer. Get enough of the questions right to a reasonable standard and you’ll be approved, then all you need to do is reload the game and you should have access to the Pokestop submission feature.

Be aware that you can only try the exam once at a time, and if you fail you’ll be locked out of trying again for a while – so if you want to get a Pokestop idea submitted fast, make sure to take the entrance material it offers you seriously the first time.

And you can definitely fail if you’re just guessing, even with it being multiple choice. I know that’s possible because I managed to fail the first time around.