Pokémon Go's big raid event will offer free passes, likely your best chance at Shiny Lapras

Pokémon Go's next big event will focus on raiding, with a week of extra raid passes for free, a bumper raid hour, and a raid day specifically for Lapras.

The week will run from next Tuesday, 21st May, at 9pm (so, after raids finish here in the UK) until 28th May at the same time.

Over the week, an interesting selection of bosses will be available - including the release of Shiny Bronzor via Tier 1 raids. All raids will give double Stardust and double XP. Happily, two raid passes will be given out every day instead of the usual one. [UPDATE: Mention of this has subsequently been removed.]

Event raid bosses:

• ★: Machop, Slakoth, Shinx, Bronzor
• ★★: Misdreavus, Kirlia, Mawile, Feebas, Clamperl, Bibarel
• ★★★: Alolan Raichu, Chansey, Scyther, Aerodactyl, Floatzel
• ★★★★: Alolan Marowak, Dragonite, Tyranitar, Absol, Metagross

The very hard to find Clamperl will be a Tier 2 raid - good if you missed out on its Research Day event. And Chansey as a Tier 3 is always a way of nabbing a high IV 'mon you can evolve into gym defense king Blissey.

Within the week itself, a special evening raid hour will take place on Wednesday 22nd May, from 6-7pm local time wherever you are. Expect raids on every gym.

But the highlight of the week is a three-hour raid day for Lapras, on Sunday 25th at 11am-2pm local time in Europe and the Americas. This will offer five free raid passes, and give you a shot at getting one of the game's most sought-after Shiny Pokémon.

This raised my eyebrows a little - players could previously Shiny hunt Lapras via a rare Research task, and it was fun seeing local players work together to track these tasks down. But, as of this month, the Lapras task has been replaced - meaning your only other ways of getting one are to hatch it from a 10k egg (which requires a lot of luck) or to find one in the wild (good luck with that). Or, of course, use raid passes to get one here. It'll remain to be seen what the Shiny rate is for it - but those five raid passes will help. Finding five Lapras tasks was a lot more difficult.