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Pokemon Go guide: How to earn and level up Gym Badges

Published Jul 5th, 2017 11:40AM EDT
Pokemon Go: How to get Gym Badges
Image: Pokemon Go

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With all the excitement surrounding the addition of Raid Battles to Pokemon Go, there’s a chance that you overlooked the new Gym Badges that were added to the game at the same time. Gym Badges are a form of recognition for your contributions to an individual Gym. Every Gym Badge starts at the Basic tier, but you can level it up by capturing, defending or simply interacting with the Gym.

Now that you know how to earn a Gym Badge, you’re probably wondering what it’s going to take to level up that Badge. Thankfully, the team over at Pokemon Go Hub has put together a chart showing off how much experience it requires to upgrade a Badge from Basic to Bronze, Silver and Gold, as well as how much experience can be gained by performing different actions at a Gym in Pokemon Go.

In order to upgrade a Gym Badge to the Bronze tier, you need to gain 500 XP. Silver requires 4,000 XP and Gold takes 30,000 XP. You’re going to have a spend a significant amount of time at a Gym in order to get a Gold Badge, but the higher your Badge level, the better the rewards you’ll receive from spinning the Photo Disc. If you have a Gym near your home, focus on leveling up its Badge.

Below is a chart that explains how much XP you can gain from performing actions at a Gym:

Action Reward Multiplier
Defending a Gym 1 XP Reward * Defender CP
Feeding a Berry 10 XP N/A
Deploying a Defender 100 XP N/A
Winning a Raid 1,000 XP N/A
Winning a Battle 0.01 XP Reward * Defender CP
Losing a Battle 5 XP N/A

Focus on Raid Battles and deploying your Pokemon in order to gain XP for your Gym Badge. Feeding berries is an easy way to gain a few experience points, it also promotes stagnant Gyms, which means attacking another team’s Pokemon or deploying your own Pokemon in the Gym will be impossible.

Gym Badges are easy to collect, but you’re going to have to put some time in if you want to level them up. If you want to check your progress on a Gym Badge, follow these instructions:

  1. In Map View, touch the Trainer Profile icon.
  2. Scroll down to the Gym Badge section.
  3. Touch the List button to see a full listing of all your Badges
  4. Touch any Badge to view details about your interactions with the Gym.

Best of luck on your journey to become the ultimate Pokemon Go Gym Badge collector!

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.