Pokemon Go January Community Day 2021 Is Today: Shiny Machop, Bonuses, Event Move, And More

Pokemon Go's first Community Day event of 2021 has arrived. January's Community Day takes place today, January 16, and it promises to give players around the world a chance to catch a new featured Pokemon, learn another event-exclusive move, and take advantage of other in-game bonuses. To help you prepare for the event, we've rounded up everything you need to know about January 2021's Community Day below.

January 2021 Featured Pokemon: Machop

This month's featured Pokemon is Machop, one of the Fighting-type Pokemon from the original Red and Blue versions. Throughout January's Community Day, Machop will spawn in the wild much more frequently than it normally does, making this a good opportunity to stock up on enough Machop Candy to evolve it. Shiny Machop will be appearing throughout the event as well. This will be much rarer to find, but you should be able to encounter one with a little persistence.

January's Community Day Move: Payback

This month's Community Day exclusive move is the Dark-type attack Payback. If you are able to evolve Machop's evolved form, Machoke, into Machamp up to two hours after the Community Day ends, the Pokemon will automatically know Payback. This applies to any Machoke that evolves during the designated time frame, even if you caught it prior to the Community Day.

January's Community Day Hours

January's Community Day will run for six hours instead of the traditional three, from 11 AM to 5 PM local time. This means you'll have until 7 PM local time to evolve Machoke into a Machamp that knows Payback.

Community Day Special Research

As part of this month's Community Day, Niantic will offer an event-exclusive Special Research story called Straight to the Top, Machop. Tickets to access the story can be purchased through Pokemon Go's in-game shop for $1 USD. If you purchased a ticket for next month's Kanto Tour event by January 13, however, you'll receive tickets for January and February's Community Day Special Research for free as a bonus.

Other Community Day Bonuses

On top of increased Machop spawns, a couple of in-game bonuses will be active throughout January's Community Day. First, you'll earn triple the normal amount of Stardust for catching Pokemon during the event. In addition, Incense that you use will remain active for three hours, and trading distance is temporarily being increased to 40 km, letting you trade Pokemon with other players from farther away than usual.

Finally, Niantic will be selling a special Community Day bundle in Pokemon Go's in-game shop. The bundle will cost 1,280 PokeCoins and contains the following items:

• 1 Elite Charged TM
• 4 Incense
• 4 Star Pieces
• 30 Ultra Balls