The third season of Pokémon GO’s battle league starts today. Here’s what’s new to the feature and what elements have remained the same.

Battling is a concept synonymous with the Pokémon franchise. Without it, the games would be almost pointless. Yes, players could still go about trying to catch ’em all, but that would make for a very shallow series that probably wouldn’t still be around 25 years later. That’s why it came as quite the surprise when Pokémon GO featured no battle elements whatsoever at launch.

That has long since changed. Trainers can battle in gyms, raids, with friends, and best of all, as part of Pokémon GO’s Battle League. The feature, which was introduced earlier this year, matches trainers up with others around the world that are of a similar rank. Players can rank up as high as ten, depending on how often they participate and how many battles they win.

Today (Monday, July 27, 2020) marks the first day of GO Battle League Season 3. As always, the season begins with the Great League in which no Pokémon with a CP higher than 1500 can be used. While the league tiers remain the same this season, Ultra and Master will follow Great, a number of things have been changed during the short break.

The biggest change of all is the introduction of the Flying Cup. Rather than base a Pokémon’s eligibility on its CP, this cup will do exactly what it says on the tin. Only flying-types allowed. Niantic has not revealed when the Flying Cup will take place exactly, just that it will be a part of Season 3 and be a part of an upcoming event. The Battle Until You Win feature has also been removed for Season 3.

As for which Pokémon trainers can expect to encounter as rewards for ranking up, they can all be found below.

  • Rank 1: Pidgeot Rank 4: Zigzagoon Rank 7: Galarian Farfetch’d Rank 8: Rufflet Rank 9: Scraggy Rank 10: Pikachu Libre

In terms of the aforementioned unnamed event, apparently there will be two taking place during Season 3. However, the best news of all relates to an element that won’t change at all. Trainers still don’t need to walk 3 km before being able to compete in GO Battle League.

Source: Pokémon GO