The Club Campfire Program supports local, in-person Niantic Communities in Latin America, India, Indonesia and Thailand by empowering their experiences. Club Campfire Communities can receive special perks for their communities, like item codes and swag for giveaways, access to Niantic representatives for special feedback sessions, and other opportunities to support their community’s growth.

Individuals who run in-person events in their area, grow their communities, and create and connect safe spaces for Trainers to play can apply to become one of Niantic’s Club Campfire Communities.

A Community Leader is not a Niantic employee, contractor, representative, or volunteer.

A Community Leader is someone who voluntarily runs events in their local community with the gratitude and assistance of Niantic. Niantic recognizes how much passion and hard work it takes to bring people together, and this program is built to help leaders do just that.

We do not restrict what a Community Leader says or does; they have the freedom to give positive or negative feedback publicly. However, we do require that interactions are professional—all feedback should be respectful, constructive, and should never attack the people who work on the game.

Diversity. Pokémon GO Trainers include people of many nationalities, identities, and ethnicities. We want to ensure that our Club Campfire Communities do, too.

Professionalism and quality of character. Being a Community Leader means that you’ve been recognized by Niantic. Our Club Campfire Communities should always treat others with respect, honesty, and kindness.

Positivity. We know that communities grow in the image of their leadership, and the best communities are built by creating and highlighting the positive instead of focusing on the negative. Opportunities for critical feedback should be treated with respect—never with cruelty or anger.

Integrity. Communities should avoid cheating in all forms. That includes discussing cheating or using bots, websites, or other tools that encourage cheating. Club Campfire Communities should always do their best to ensure that their communities remain cheat-free.

Fill out the application form located on this website.

If you're a member of a Community, or a solo player, you can still apply to join the Club Campfire newsletter! This way, you can check all the news of the program and discover a Community near you.

After an initial review of your application, you will be invited to join a community of applicants and continue with the vetting process.

After you’ve been added to the group, you must run at least four community events using Campfire, achieving 10 Check-ins on the app on each. You must also share all links to these Meetups.

While these events occur, we will conduct a final background check and a safety check of your community.

Niantic has established an internal process to ensure that candidates meet our standards. Upon applying to the Club Campfire Program, applicants will undergo the following.

An applicant’s Pokémon GO account will be checked for any history of cheating, with an emphasis on the last six months.

An applicant will be subject to a background check for recorded incidents involving the safety of families and children.

An applicant will undergo a series of customer service and community checks. These checks help verify that the applicant’s community is moderated and follows common sense rules. This process also checks to see if complaints have been reported against the applicant in the past six years.

Not all applicants are guaranteed to become Club Campfire Communities. Club Campfire Communities may lose their status at any time if they engage in any behavior that can be considered against our standards, is harmful to their community, or violates our Terms of Service.

We require that communities are respectful, family-friendly, and exemplify a willingness to support each other in a friendly, constructive manner. In order to qualify and remain in good standing, communities must meet the following requirements.

• Community leadership must be over the age of 18. Community leadership should have rules and regulations in place to ensure all members are over the age of 13.

• Communities must be public and accessible for anyone to join. Your community cannot be locked behind any form of paid gate, such as a Patreon or Steady membership.

• Communities must have a presence on Campfire and use it to organize their events in order to receive in-game rewards. If your community does not currently have access to Campfire, we will provide that for you.

• Communities cannot publicly advocate for or share information about cheating.

• Your community should have rules and regulations to govern what happens if members of your community discuss cheating.

• Communities with high numbers of cheaters or public discussion of cheating will be removed from the program.

• Communities must be actively moderated and maintain a set of rules that encourage good behavior. Communities must maintain an active, positive space for members.

We will periodically check community hubs to ensure their content is meeting our requirements. Failure to meet requirements will result in immediate removal.

Your community needs to include at least 10 Trainers.

In order to receive incentives, events must always do the following.

• Be held safely. If there are potentially dangerous elements involved, such as inclement weather or other harmful environments, Club Campfire Communities should cancel events or reschedule for an alternate location.

• Be held in-person and focused on in-game experiences, such as Raid Hour, Community Day, Battle Days, or other events. Incentives will not be supplied for events in which the community does not meet in-person.

• Be scheduled as a Meetup on Niantic Campfire, and collect Check-ins during the event hours.

• Have at least ten attendees (ten check-ins).

• Have a Community Leader present.

How do Community Leader Badges work?

The Community Leader Badge is activated in the Niantic Campfire app and only Trainers in the app will be able to see this new feature. Campfire Adventurer Club Community Leaders who meet our requirements will be able to earn these badges and then enjoy all the benefits they bring. The badges can be seen in the following photos in the app:

• Your profile: The Community Leader Badge will appear on your profile and other Trainers will be able to see it by clicking on it.

• In your profile photo in chat channels: when you send a message in any Niantic Campfire chat channel, your profile photo will appear with the Insignia in the message!

• Encounters: you can also create and edit encounters with the Community Leader Badge! Simply select the option to activate Insignia when creating or editing and your Meeting will show your Community Leader selection.

Benefits

Have a Community Leader Badge on your profile and in your Meetings to show other Trainers that you are a Leader of the Campfire Adventurers Club, a reference for the local Community and supported by official Niantic programs. Coaches who click on your profile will also be able to see more details about the project.

Additionally, Encounters that have Community Leader Badges will be highlighted in relation to other events in the Encounters tab and also on the Niantic Campfire Map.

Process to receive a Badge

It's super simple! To receive the Community Leader Badge, you must meet the following requirements:

• Have a valid and active account on the Niantic Campfire app

• Share the username (@username) and the email associated with that account with the Niantic team

• Be a member of the Clu

Campfire program.

• Comply with the Niantic and Pokémon GO Terms of Service

If you meet the requirements, Niantic Time will contact you today to confirm your details and begin the process.

Terms of ServiceTo receive and maintain their Community Leader Badge, Leaders must follow the Niantic and Pokémon GO Terms of Service and Terms and Conditions. Members caught breaking the terms of service may have their badges removed and be removed from the project.

CHEATING PART 1

Club Campfire Communities’ accounts must be in good standing and pass a check with Niantic in order to qualify. Additionally, your community space may not actively encourage or advocate for any sort of cheating. To help you navigate this topic and help you avoid violating the Terms of Service, we are providing the following examples to assist you.

CHEATING PART 2

TRICKS: If something happens inside of the Pokémon GO app, without any external influence, then this is not cheating. If you perform any action inside the app that leads to unexpected but possible behavior, this is not considered cheating.

Tricks are OK to talk about, but are not confirmed or supported by Niantic.

CHEATING PART 3

PHONE CHEATS: If you leave the Pokémon GO app and change something about your phone’s settings to impact gameplay, this is cheating. This may include manipulating standard functions on your phone through its settings, such as switching GPS on and off or changing time zones in the settings.

Talking about phone cheats or encouraging members to use them should not be allowed on your community hub.

CHEATING PART 4

THIRD-PARTY CHEATS: Using a third-party device or third-party software to manipulate data or the Pokémon GO app, or using a manipulated third-party version of Pokémon GO, is cheating.

This category includes using a bot to play Pokémon GO or using software to manipulate your GPS signal.

Talking about third-party cheats or encouraging members to use them should not be allowed on your community hub.

CHEATING PART 5

These are only a few examples. If you are unsure, check the Niantic Terms of Service. We can’t foresee all the ways someone might cheat in Pokémon GO, so if you encounter something that feels wrong but is not classified as cheating in our guidelines, act with caution. Talking about cheating is a serious topic for us and can cause a community and its Club Campfire to be immediately removed.

If you or your Community Hub have had any previous issues with cheating, please let us know so this information won’t affect our relationship in the future. An offense that occurred before you joined the program does not exclude you from participation as long as you are open about this.