Pokemon Go: What Are Gym Badges & How Do You Get Them?

A new ‘Pokemon Go’ gym update has been released. (Niantic)

In the latest Pokemon Go update, a brand new gameplay mechanic has been introduced: gym badges. So what exactly are these badges? How do you get them, and what purpose do they serve?

Gym badges are obtained by interacting with a gym, specifically by battling in it, defending it for a certain period of time, or giving Pokemon in the gym berries. There are four tiers to the gym badges: basic, bronze, silver, and gold. You earn higher tiers the more you interact with the gym, and so if you defend a particular gym for a long period of time, you’ll be able to get all the way up to a gold badge.

This badge will display in your gym badge inventory as belonging to that particular gym, and so if you interact a lot with the Empire State Building gym, you’ll have an Empire State Building gym badge in your inventory.

Aside from these just being fun collectibles, there’s another practical purpose of the gym badges: if you have a badge, you can spin the Photo Disc on top of a gym and earn bonus items there, and so the gym sort of turns into a PokeStop for you.

Here’s what you need to do in order to view your gym badges once you have collected some:

• Touch the trainer profile button in the bottom left of the screen.
• Scroll down and you’ll see a gym badge section.
• Touch the list button to see the full section.
• Touch any of the badges to find out more information about it.
• Once you’re in the badge section, you can click the map button on the bottom left of the screen to see your badges displayed on a map, in case you have trouble keeping track of which badge is from where.

This comes as part of a massive new Pokemon Go update which changes the way that gyms work. The update also introduces what’s known as a “motivation system,” which means that Pokemon are gradually drained of CP as they are defeated in gyms, and you can get them back in shape by feeding them berries. This encourages you or other members of your team to constantly stay on top of your gyms rather than just placing a Pokemon there and leaving.

In addition, a raid mode feature is being added to the game, although this is not expected to officially launch for a few weeks.