Hi everyone,
I’m trying to understand how Niantic currently selects a replacement Gym after an existing Gym is removed.
Here’s what happened:
- A Gym in our S2 Level 14 cell was removed yesterday because the original Wayspot no longer exists. It had been approved around 10 years ago, but the location is now just an empty lot.
- After I reported it, Niantic removed the Wayspot, and a replacement Gym appeared almost immediately.
What surprised me is which Wayspot became the new Gym.
The selected Wayspot has:
However, another eligible Wayspot in the same cell has:
- 3 photos
- 8 total photo likes
Based on the information that has circulated in the Wayfarer community for years, I expected the latter to become the Gym. Instead, the Wayspot with no photo likes was selected.
Has anyone observed similar behavior recently?
Is there any current evidence for how replacement Gyms are chosen, or is the selection now effectively random? As far as I know, Niantic has never officially documented the selection criteria, so I’m curious whether the community has discovered anything new.
Thanks!
Scopely (niantic) do not state how it works.
There is some debate on the matter…
It used to be “photo votes” but IMO it is now (at least mostly) Random.
Staff have called out trying to manipulate which becomes the gym as abuse on the old forum, so I don’t test to see if any method still works. While they haven’t mentioned the abuse issue on the current forum, we have had this comment from staff here:
We have observed that a Showcase stop will not become a gym, and where I am, it seems like the ones that have the highest number of photo likes were the ones chosen for Showcase stops. It can only be confirmed that a stop is a Showcase while they are live, but that might be why the expected one did not become a gym.
Thanks for the explanation!
That makes sense. I had been expecting the Wayspot with the most photo likes to become the Gym, so I was quite surprised by the result.
I was actually hoping the Gym would appear at a Wayspot next to my workplace, since several of my coworkers play Pokémon GO and we could have done raids together. Instead, it appeared near my home, where I don’t think there are many active players around, so that’s a bit disappointing
Thanks again for taking the time to explain it!
Also there’s a possibility that if a stop existed prior to the Ingress split, it has Ingress votes that aren’t visible now.
We believe that the Wayfarer Map now shows all votes. There were some issues at the beginning where the one with the most votes wasn’t being promoted, so we weren’t certain. But those appear to have been glitches between in person and on map thumbs, not hidden votes, from the ones I have seen rectified.
Just to say that the gym below was a showcase pokestop until an additional pokestop was added to its S14 cell.
wow! do you have evidence it was a showcase? this is huge news if it can be proved. was this wayspot moved into a different L14?
I’m not sure how to provide evidence of it being a showcase pokestop. I think I would struggle to find any screenshots of that area when it happened to have a showcase running. This wayspot has remained in the same place. The S14 cell had 5 wayspots and a sixth was added a month ago. A seventh was added last week. I happened to be at the adjacent leisure centre earlier today and noticed for the first time in person that it had become a gym.
EDIT - Just checking Whatsapp and I was informed it had become a gym on 5th July 2026 and had duly forgotten until today and the penny had not dropped about the showcase until reading your post!
a win there would show on your showcase star badge
Winning easier said than done, but yes won one there as recently as 24th February this year.
can you provide a screen shot?
Did this become a gym after the change of where showcases were?
Looks like the new showcases were added May 26, 2026 according to the conversations I am seeing around that.
So it could have lost that status.
It would need a win after that date,
thank you so much! i knew there was a question i was overlooking.
mostly showcases were added, but some did change. none near me changed, so i forget that part.
I have asked another Wayfarer who is very local to the leisure centre and they are “fairly certain” that it had stopped being a showcase and another pokestop at the leisure centre had become a showcase instead. Their last win there was 5th May 2026. I wasn’t aware that any showcases had disappeared as the ones closest to me are still there. Sorry for causing the confusion!
