Pokémon GO has officially lowered the level requirement for Trainers to access Wayfarer. Starting July 29, 2025, at 1:00 PM PDT, players who reach level 35 are able to nominate new PokéStops and Gyms, suggest edits, and review Wayspot submissions through Wayfarer.
“We’re opening the doors for even more Trainers to contribute valuable Wayspots and help shape the world around us,” the Wayfarer team wrote in the announcement. The change is aimed at making the game more accessible, especially for players in rural areas where PokéStops are harder to come by.
Wayfarer Team describes the update as a “monumental step” for the community. But longtime Wayfarer users aren’t so sure, and honestly we are neither: more people in Wayfarer will not fix its inherent problems. But alas, let’s see what the Wayfarer team had to say first.
What is Wayfarer?
Wayfarer is a system used by players to review PokéStop submissions, which are called Wayspots in Wayfarer lingo. As a Wayfarer member, you can nominate new Wayspots in your community, review others’ nominations, and contribute information or edits to existing Wayspots to help the Pokémon GO map evolve in tandem with the real-world.
What is new in Wayfarer?
- Wayfarer Eligibility: Once you are eligible to participate in Wayfarer, you unlock the ability to nominate new Wayspots, submit edits to existing Wayspots shown on the map, add Likes to Wayspot photos in Pokémon GO, and review submitted Wayspot nominations.
- Wayfarer Forum: We warmly invite all of our new Explorers to join the Community Forum and connect with our existing skilled Explorers. Seasoned Explorers, we invite you to also welcome and guide them like you always do.
- Wayfarer Onboarding: All new Trainers at level 35+ will need to complete the Wayfarer Onboarding before they can contribute Wayspots, submit Edits, or perform Reviews.
- Wayfarer Criteria: The criteria for Wayspot nominations will not change. All new Explorers must follow them. Please review our existing criteria in our Help Center or our Community Forum.
- Future Level Changes: We’re excited about the possibility of even more level drops this year! We’ll be taking a thoughtful approach, carefully observing activity after each drop to find the perfect balance. If all goes well, we’ll absolutely consider further reductions, opening up Wayfarer to even more Trainers!
Wayfarer Fatigue and Broken Review Criteria are the Main problem
Many of the top comments on Reddit pushed back against the overwhelmingly celebratory tone of the announcement, saying the problem isn’t how many people can submit, but how poorly the current system handles reviews.
And we tend to agree, the Wayfarer review criteria has wandered and meandered over the years, but currently it feels quite random. A lot of old school reviewers simply refuse to accept nominations like trail markers, even tho they are supposed to be valid.
Similarly, memorial benches are usually rejected and picnic areas sometimes get through, which makes sense to some, but the real problem is that the information about both is hidden somewhere on the Wayfarer forums! There is an entire section of the forums dedicated to review clarifications, and none of those are actually linked from the main review criteria inside Wayfarer.
One of the comments actually had a sensible proposal for fixing this:
- If a nomination is rejected but later approved on appeal, everyone who rejected it should get an email saying their review was wrong.
- If someone racks up enough of these appeal reversals, they should lose their review privileges.
- Nomination categories should be clearer and built into the game. For example, if a player selects an automatically invalid category, the game should tell them right away.
And it is definitely better than the current system which offers little to no feedback.
What are your thoughts on this change? Do you support it or not? Share with us in the comment sections of whatever social media platform you came here from!
