The Best Places to Play Pokémon GO in Los Angeles

LA is huge. A GO Tour citywide day works across all of Los Angeles County and Orange County, which sounds great until you open the map and try to pick where to play Pokémon GO in Los Angeles.

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In this guide 8 sections

Cream and I have played two GO Tours in LA, with every citywide day both times. The first year our hotel was in Little Tokyo, and we still rode out to Santa Monica for every city day. The second year we spent a month in Santa Monica, right through GO Tour: Unova. Santa Monica won both times.

Where to Play Pokémon GO in Los Angeles: My Quick Answer

• Best area: Santa Monica. The pier, Third Street Promenade, and the beach path toward Venice are one long, walkable cluster of PokéStops and gyms.
• Runner-up: Downtown LA and Little Tokyo. There are lots of spawns and raids, but it's hilly, with plenty of streets to cross.
• After your park day: Old Pasadena, a short ride from the Rose Bowl, so you play instead of sitting in traffic.
• Almost anywhere works: Hollywood, Universal CityWalk, and Rodeo Drive are good too. The one spot to skip on a game day is Griffith Observatory, where cell service is weak.
• Raid groups: official meetups go up in the Campfire app before every GO Tour, and Little Tokyo and Santa Monica had one in both 2025 and 2026. Go to one before the event, and you'll know faces all weekend.

Need somewhere to stay? These three cover every type of GO Tour trip.

Next GO Tour, we'd base ourselves in Santa Monica again. If it's booked up or over budget, Little Tokyo works too. Pasadena makes sense only if your ticket is just the park day. Where to stay for GO Tour LA weighs all four bases, from the pier to Glendale.

How GO Tour City Days Work in Los Angeles

A city day is any GO Tour day you play outside the Rose Bowl. The last few years, it worked like this:

• Your ticketed day: you get the park, and the event bonuses also work anywhere in LA County and Orange County during event hours.
• Citywide add-on days: each add-on buys one more day of event play out in the city. You get the event spawns, better shiny odds, half hatch distance, six Special Trades at half the Stardust, nine daily Raid Passes from gyms, the event raids, and the event Field Research.
• What's not included: Rose Bowl Stadium and Brookside Golf Course are only open to you on your ticketed day, and the ticketed Special Research can only be done once.
• Hours: the event bonuses ran 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time in 2026, the same as 2025.

Orange County counts too. In 2025 and 2026 it was part of the citywide area. Official meetups ran in Fullerton in 2025, and in Irvine, Tustin, and Lake Forest in 2026. A lot of trainers also spend their Sunday at Disneyland in Anaheim, which sits inside the citywide area. We haven't done that one ourselves.

We buy every citywide day, every year, and we did the same for eight days at Pokémon GO Fest Japan. How GO Tour LA tickets and add-ons work has three years of prices. Next up is GO Tour: Alola, back in LA from Friday, February 19 to Sunday, February 21, with the global event the weekend after. As of October 2026, the venue and ticket details aren't out yet. Tickets are due "next Season".

The Best Places to Play Pokémon GO in Los Angeles

We played the first two areas ourselves. The rest are LA's other player hubs: the famous names, and the spots the official GO Tour meetups keep coming back to.

1. Santa Monica // The Best Place to Play in LA

Santa Monica is our pick for every city day. LA's best spots are here, packed into a few walkable blocks by the ocean.

Start at the pier, wander up to Third Street Promenade, and follow the beach path south toward Venice when the crowds build. That walk was our route most days, so Pokémon GO in Santa Monica gets its own guide, with the route and our best moments on the pier.

• Who it's for: everyone, and anyone who wants the best city day in LA
• Metro: Downtown Santa Monica (E Line), a short walk to the pier and the Promenade
• Best time: mornings and afternoons on the pier; it gets very crowded in the evening
• Good to know: when the pier fills up, move to the beach path or into town

2. Downtown LA and Little Tokyo // Best for the Days Before the Event

Downtown is a solid second for playing, and a fun part of LA to explore. For GO Tour: Sinnoh in 2024, we stayed a week at the DoubleTree in Little Tokyo and spent the days before the event playing our way around Little Tokyo and Downtown. On the event days, we rode to Santa Monica, and those Uber rides added up.

Little Tokyo is the easy start. Japanese Village Plaza is an open-air lane of shops and food under strings of lanterns, with a red fire lookout tower at the First Street entrance. Little Tokyo hosted official GO Tour meetups in both 2025 and 2026.

From there, walk west to Grand Park and City Hall, then up Bunker Hill to The Broad and the Bunker Hill Steps. Pershing Square is a few blocks south, and L.A. Live is next to Crypto.com Arena. Union Station and Olvera Street are one A Line stop north of Little Tokyo. We played every one of these. LA's tourism board adds the Walt Disney Concert Hall, across the street from The Broad, and The Bloc, near Pershing Square.

Downtown has plenty of spawns and raids, but you cross a lot of streets, and parts of it are hilly. Santa Monica was easier for us. The pier, the Promenade, and the walk to Venice Beach barely make you cross a street, and when your eyes are on your phone, that's a good thing.

• Who it's for: trainers who land a few days early and want to explore before the event
• Metro: Little Tokyo/Arts District (A and E Lines), Union Station (A, B, and D Lines), Civic Center/Grand Park and Pershing Square (B and D Lines)
• Good to know: parts of Downtown, Skid Row especially, can feel sketchy at night, so play it in daylight

3. Old Pasadena // Where to Play After Your Park Day

Pokémon GO in Pasadena doesn't stop at the Rose Bowl park day. Both years, we left the park at closing time and spent the evening in traffic instead of playing. Next time, we're staying in Pasadena into the evening. The Metro runs late enough for that, and how to get to the Rose Bowl has the last trains back to Santa Monica. We haven't played Old Pasadena ourselves yet, but that's where trainers go when they play Pasadena outside the park.

Visit Pasadena lists the city's most popular gyms as Pasadena City Hall, Central Park, Memorial Park, the USC Pacific Asia Museum, the Pasadena Ice Skating Center, and the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center. Its suggested routes include the Route 66 Trail along Colorado Boulevard and the paseo to City Hall. Old Pasadena itself is a 22-block historic district of shops and restaurants, so dinner is never far away.¹

• Who it's for: anyone leaving the park who'd rather play than drive
• Metro: Memorial Park (A Line), on the edge of Old Pasadena
• Best time: right after the park closes, through dinner
• Good to know: Pasadena had its own official GO Tour meetup on the Sunday of 2026

4. Hollywood, Universal CityWalk, and Rodeo Drive // The Famous Names

Hollywood, Universal CityWalk, and Rodeo Drive are all good places to play, and they're the sights most first-timers want anyway. On Hollywood Boulevard, the B Line drops you at Hollywood and Highland, on the Walk of Fame and a short walk from the TCL Chinese Theatre. CityWalk sits just outside Universal Studios Hollywood, a free shuttle ride up from the next stop, Universal City/Studio City. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills has no subway stop yet, so take an Uber.

Rodeo gave us our most LA moment. During our GO Tour Sinnoh week in 2024, Fendi had special sponsored PokéStops at its stores, and spinning one gave you two Fendi avatar items, a hat and a T-shirt. So we went to find the Fendi store on Rodeo and spin it. That's when we saw Adam Sandler, in his basketball pants and a hoodie. We were freaking out, quietly. The Fendi stops ended in January 2025, but Rodeo is still a fun street to play.

• Who it's for: first-timers who want the famous sights between raids
• Metro: Hollywood/Highland and Universal City/Studio City (B Line); an Uber for Rodeo Drive
• Good to know: Griffith Observatory is the one place we wouldn't play. You don't get much cell service up there, so visit before or after the event instead.

5. Exposition Park // Museums on the E Line

Exposition Park sits on the E Line between Downtown and Santa Monica, so it's an easy stop on a city day. It's home to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Science Center, the California African American Museum, and the LA Memorial Coliseum, with USC across the street. An official GO Tour meetup was held here in 2025.

• Who it's for: trainers who want open space and landmarks between Downtown and the beach
• Metro: Expo Park/USC (E Line)
• Good to know: the Rose Garden is closed every year from January 1 to March 15 for pruning, so it's shut during GO Tour.²

6. Miracle Mile // LACMA, the Tar Pits, and The Grove

LA's tourism board lists three Pokémon GO spots on this stretch of Wilshire Boulevard: LACMA, with its rows of vintage street lamps called Urban Light, the La Brea Tar Pits next door, and The Grove shopping center nearby. It got much easier to reach in May 2026, when the D Line subway opened to Wilshire/La Brea and Wilshire/Fairfax.³

• Who it's for: trainers who want famous photo stops with their spins
• Metro: Wilshire/Fairfax or Wilshire/La Brea (D Line)

7. Long Beach // Shoreline Aquatic Park

Shoreline Aquatic Park, on the Long Beach waterfront, has been a player hangout since the game launched in 2016. It hosted the official GO Wild Area Community Celebration in November 2025. Long Beach had its own GO Tour meetup in 2025, too.

• Who it's for: trainers staying near Long Beach or the harbor
• Metro: Downtown Long Beach (A Line)

How to Find Raids in Los Angeles

During GO Tour, you won't be playing alone. In 2026, Scopely counted 324,000 trainers taking part across the city, 27,900 of them with the citywide add-on.⁴

• Campfire: this is the official app for meetups. Before every GO Tour, local Community Ambassadors post meetups across LA, and you can RSVP there or just show up.
• Go where the players are: most trainers stay and play in Santa Monica during GO Tour, so that's where the crowd is.

Go to a meetup before the event starts. We joined an official group in Santa Monica for the Raid Hour before GO Tour. Then all weekend, we kept running into people from that night. It was fun to see everyone again and ask, "Any cool catches?" Meet players before the event, and you'll have someone to chat with every time you see them. Pokémon GO players are always the nicest.

Getting Between Spots Without a Car

LA is spread out, so treat each area as its own day. The Metro connects most of the places above:

Line	Useful stops for players
E Line	Downtown Santa Monica, Expo Park/USC, 7th St/Metro Center, Little Tokyo/Arts District
A Line	Downtown Long Beach, 7th St/Metro Center, Little Tokyo/Arts District, Union Station, Memorial Park (Pasadena)
B and D Lines	Union Station, Civic Center/Grand Park, Pershing Square, 7th St/Metro Center
B Line	Hollywood/Highland, Universal City/Studio City
D Line	Wilshire/La Brea and Wilshire/Fairfax, for LACMA and the Tar Pits

A ride is $1.75, transfers are free for two hours, and you never pay more than $5 in a day. Tap a contactless card or your phone at the gate.⁵ For anything off the rail lines, Uber and Lyft are everywhere.

Play from the back seat. On the city streets closer to Santa Monica, traffic is so slow that you can play really well in an Uber. You can even play a little on the freeway when traffic crawls, and there are a few stops and sometimes spawns along it. Go too fast, though, and the game caps your speed.

If you do drive, let the passenger play. California law bans holding your phone while you drive, apart from a single tap or swipe on a mounted phone.⁶

Regional Pokémon and the Los Angeles Background

Catch Tauros. It's the North America regional, so LA is the place to fill that Pokédex slot. LA is also in the zones for the Americas forms, like Pom-Pom Style Oricorio and Yellow Flower Flabébé, and the Western Hemisphere's West Sea Shellos and Blue-Striped Basculin, when they're spawning.

Get the Los Angeles background. Catch a Pokémon after an in-person raid on your ticketed day or a citywide add-on day, and it has a chance of coming with a special Los Angeles location background. It shows on the Pokémon's summary page. In 2025 it came from five-star raids.

We have it on a Palkia and a Dialga from GO Tour Sinnoh. The Palkia was a hundo, caught on the Santa Monica Pier. It's such a cool background, and a nice souvenir from the trip. The in-person backgrounds are really special to me, because they remind me of the place and the moments.

There's no Pokémon Center store. LA doesn't have a permanent Pokémon Center store. For GO Tour Kalos in 2026, a Pokémon Center Pop-Up Store opened at the Rose Bowl for the first time. Tokyo has several, and Pokémon GO in Tokyo lists every one with its hours.

Tips for Playing Pokémon GO in LA

Pack a power bank. A city day runs from morning to night, and Pokémon GO eats through a phone by the afternoon. You'll find the pack we take to every GO Tour in our Amazon storefront.

Sort out data before you fly. Flying in from abroad? Set up an Airalo eSIM for the US before your flight, so the game loads the moment you land at LAX.

Keep moving. Our best catches came while we were walking between spots. That's the heart of our GO Tour game plan, Catch, Hatch, Raid.

Be city smart. You'll see homelessness in parts of LA and Santa Monica. We walked all over Santa Monica and never felt unsafe, and overall it felt safer to us than Downtown.

Is LA Good for Pokémon GO?

Yes. Other than Griffith, all of LA is really good to play. Santa Monica is the easiest, Downtown has the spawns if you don't mind hills and crosswalks, and the famous names all work too. What makes LA hard is the distance between areas, so pick one area per day: Santa Monica for city days, Downtown before the event, and Pasadena after your park day.

Next Steps for Pokémon GO in LA and Beyond

• Pokémon GO Tour Los Angeles: tickets, budget, and our weekend plan
• Pokémon GO in Santa Monica: our city-day route, from the pier to Venice
• Where to stay for GO Tour LA: four bases, by price and ride time
• Pokémon GO in Tokyo: our favorite city in the world to play, for comparison
• Pokémon GO Fest Japan: eight days of play, and we did every one