Pokemon Go Guide: How to Change Teams

Team Valor, Team Mystic, and Team Instinct. These are the three teams available to players in Pokemon Go. Once you hit level five and visit a gym you can select your team, and then you’re off (see more here). Along with your teammates you can take over gyms, and defend them against your red, blue, or yellow rivals. But what if you feel that you chose poorly back at level five? What if you want to change teams? Well, here’s our guide on how to change teams in Pokemon Go, but you probably won’t like the answer.

As of this writing there is no official way to change teams in Pokemon Go (UPDATE: This has changed). According to Niantic, the option is simply not available, and they seem to have no plans to add it any time soon. Once you go red, blue, or yellow that account is stuck with that team permanently. This could change, with many players suggesting a once time chance to change teams in Pokemon Go. Further changes have to be limited, as you don’t want people switching back and forth, constantly taking over any gym they want. Some ideas put forth include spending money or Pokecoins to change teams, or other limits such as once every week.

Still, as of now once you pick a team you are stuck with it. But, there is still an option, it’s just not a very good option. Let’s say you hit level five, ran to a gym and chose to join Team Mystic. You get to work the next day and find out that everyone there chose Team Instinct, and you want to join them. Your only real option at this point is to change to a brand new account.

You can either use a new Google account, signing in with it in the game instead of your main one that you were using before, or you can create a Pokemon Trainer Club account. Having the two different accounts might work out better for you, but keep in mind that the Pokemon Trainer Club accounts have been even more susceptible to server outages than Google ones. With the new account you can change teams in Pokemon Go, but you’ll have to start all over.

Trading is coming to Pokemon Go at some point though, so perhaps you can recover your lost Pokemon then by just trading them with yourself. We still don’t know how this will work though, so I wouldn’t count on it happening any time soon.

Unfortunately these are your only options if you want to change teams in Pokemon Go. Niantic could add an official way to do this at some point, in which case we’ll update this guide with the method. Keep checking back, and be sure to read through our many other Pokemon Go guides for other tips and tricks.