Top 10 rarest shiny Pokemon in Pokemon GO

Pokémon with alternate colors to their regular appearance, known as shiny Pokémon, are rare in any Pokémon game, including Pokémon GO. While every shiny Pokémon is rare enough to celebrate an encounter, there are various factors that result in some being rarer than others. Here are the 10 rarest shiny Pokémon in Pokémon GO based on their availability during the game’s lifetime and how elusive the shiny color is—or was—during that availability period .

Top 10 rarest shiny Pokémon in Pokémon GO

10: Kanto Starters Shiny Halloween Costume

The The Kantonian starter Pokémon—Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle—wear Halloween costumes based on Shedinja, Cubone and Yamask, respectively, were only available during the 2019 and 2020 Pokémon GO Halloween events. In 2019, players could only find these Pokémon in raids, making them harder a bit compared to Pikachu wearing a Mimikyu costume. On Halloween 2020, Pikachu returns as a wild encounter, but the traditional starter Pokémon can only be obtained through hatching 5km Eggs. That has made them extremely rare, but hatching other non-event Pokémon is still possible, making them especially hard to find and making their shiny forms especially scarce.

9: Shiny Smeargle

Smeargle is hardly the rarest special encounter Pokémon in Pokémon GO: the adorable, painterly puppy photo-bombs players year-round. Combined with the easy “Snapshot” daily hearts to earn for your Buddy Pokémon, players usually don’t have to struggle to find more Smeargle than they already do. But it’s a completely different matter when it comes to the shiny shape of its red-tipped tail: Shiny Smeargle is only available during select events, such as the 2023 Festival of Color. However, during such events, the number of Smeargle players that can be found is limited, making colors difficult to capture.

8: Shiny spinner

Spinda is a Pokémon famous for its unique gimmick of having unique spot patterns on its face. The mechanics behind these patterns are somewhat complex in the mainstream Pokémon video games, resulting in billions of possible occurrences. Thankfully, this is simplified quite a bit in Pokémon GO, where there are only eight Spinda point patterns (plus one heart pattern for Valentine’s Day events).

Although the numbers in GO are significantly reduced, they are still quite notable for another reason: there is only one sample per month, and they can only be obtained as a reward for a specific field research task. Catching shiny Spinda requires not only luck like all other shiny Pokémon but also luck in finding the right field research task and a lot of patience in waiting for the right month for the desired model. your wish.

7: Shiny fur

Furfrou may be a reasonably standard Pokémon in the mainstream video game series, but it’s pretty special in Pokémon GO. In the mobile game, Furfrou is not typically available in the wild—instead, it is only available during special events, such as during Fashion Week 2022, when its shiny colors were first added to the game. This makes shiny Furfrou rare, but things only get more notable from there.

The gimmick of this fashionable poodle Pokémon is that players can style their fur differently for the cost of 25 Furfrou Candy and 10,000 Stardust. One specific hairstyle, the Heart Trim, is just one trim option available during the 2022 and 2023 Valentine’s Day events. Since the shiny Furfrou isn’t available until September 2022, lucky players owning a black poodle has only one chance to own it this sincerely ‘do.

Other types of Furfrou decorations are available year-round but are not available worldwide. In addition to Natural Appearance, Matron Trim and Dandy Trim are the only products available globally. Debutante Trim is limited to the Americas; Star Trim is limited to Asia-Pacific; and Diamond Trim is limited to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. These cuts all cover large areas, but the other three cuts are limited to individual countries: the La Reine Trim can only be issued in France, the Kabuki Trim is limited to Japan, and the Pharaoh Trim Only available in Egypt. Obtaining a shiny Furfrou in its natural form is a feat in itself, but the limited nature of its decorative details only makes it rarer.

6: Shiny World Championship 2023 Pikachu

For the 2023 Pokémon World Championship held in Yokohama, Japan, Pokémon GO has released a special program 2023 Pikachu World Championship. This Pikachu wears a colorful shirt depicting him enjoying some delicious ramen noodles, which was used as part of the championship’s marketing materials. Like the 2022 Beefeater Dressed World Championship Pikachu, it is only available through timed research, field research, and raids during the week of the championship competition, but the 2023 event a day shorter, giving players less time to find the elusive shiny thing.

5: Shiny Unknown

Unown is so rarely found in the wild that it can only appear during specific events. Its sheer elusiveness makes it rare even in its standard color, with its shiny blue form all the more notable. Add to that that Unown comes in 28 different shapes—26 letters of the English alphabet plus two punctuation marks—and you have a lot of exceptionally rare shiny Pokémon. Unown may not be impressive in battle, but it is certainly an extremely rare addition to any shiny collection.

4: Pichu’s special shiny hat

With every new Pokémon GO event there’s almost always a new one, Pikachu—but its developments aren’t always so lucky. As interesting as Pikachu’s evolution line gets, Pichu is by far the rarest, both in standard colors and especially in shiny. Pichu is only available through hatching Eggs, making it much more difficult to obtain than Pikachu, even if it is a normal color. Of all Pichu’s special hats, the Summer Hat and Witch Hat types are the rarest, but they are both extremely rare in their own right.

3: Shiny Pikachu

Catching Pikachu Libre is one of the most difficult feats to achieve in Pokémon GO. Players must participate in the GO Battle League and reach Legendary Rank, the highest possible rank in the league with a rating of at least 3000. Players must then win three battles to unlock the wild Pokémon encounter their wild, this will become the masked mascot. In addition to this once-a-season encounter, the already extremely rare luchador has a slight chance of becoming shiny—something that’s not even possible in the games from which it originates, Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

The appeal of Pikachu Libre is reduced in Interlude Seasons, where the tournament is limited to Rank 20 instead of Legendary and wild encounters take place after the player’s first victory instead of three. But as a result, the Pikachu Libre’s shiny colorway isn’t available during these seasons, making the color even more elusive. Catching any shiny Pokémon takes luck, but for Pikachu Libre, it also takes a lot of skill.

2: Pikachu shiny detective hat

Detective Hat Pikachu is already a rare Pokémon. This special Pikachu hat is only available from May 7 to May 17, 2019, coinciding with the release date of the Detective Pikachu movie. Players can only get one Detective Hat Pikachu per day via photobomb, which makes the chances of finding a shiny Detective Hat Pikachu pretty low… except for the Detective Hat Pikachu, which isn’t shiny at all. The shiny color exists in the game’s data, but it is not available to encounter.

So how can a non-shiny Pokémon become one of the rarest? Turns out, completely by accident. Some players received the Detective Pikachu Hat photobomb right at the end of the event and thus started the wild encounter after the event ended. Players lucky enough to do so got to come face to face with a shiny Detective Hat Pikachu. It is speculated that this Pikachu’s shiny key was removed when the event ended, so the shiny can only be found after the event. Therefore, players have exactly one chance to get this shiny Pokémon using the chance encounter after this event.

1: Shiny leader Pokémon

During April and May 2023, Pokémon GO held events for each of the three team leaders: Mystic Heroes from April 13 to 17, Instinct Heroes from May 2 to 8 and Brave Heroes from May 11 to 17. ‘ special research involved gave players exactly one encounter with Lapras, Elekid, and Ponyta. They were already special because they each wore an accessory with their team’s logo, but they had little opportunity to be even more special with their shiny silhouettes.

Only encountered once at a time, players must be lucky to get any of these Pokémon with their alternate color schemes. While they are all among the rarest shiny Pokémon in Pokémon GO, the rarest has to be Elekid… or Electabuzz… or Spark’s Electivire. With three evolutions but only encountered once per player, the Shiny Spark Accessory Pokémon is even rarer as players must choose between keeping it as Elekid or evolving it into Electabuzz or Electivire.

About the author

Niki Fakhoori

Niki’s love for video games spans many genres, but she especially enjoys role-playing games, adventure games, visual novels, simulation games, and fighting games. Her favorite video game-related pastime is asking her unwieldy backlog why she doesn’t have any new games to play. When she’s not playing or writing about video games, she’s playing with her cats, writing in her diary, drawing, or obsessing over the latest news in the world of stationery and planners.