Beacon

Beacons: target, Resistance, meetup, Enlightened, Niantic, Obsidian, Initio, Aegis Nova, Via Lux, Via Noir, 13MAGNUS Reawakens, EXO5

A beacon is a premium boost that can be applied to a portal to visibly mark it for all other agents.

Acquisition

Beacons cannot be hacked, dropped, recycled, or inserted into capsules. You can only obtain them by purchasing them from the store.

The following beacons are available:

  • Anomaly logo
    • 13MAGNUS Reawakens
    • Aegis Nova
    • EXO5
    • Obsidian
    • Via Lux
    • Via Noir
  • Battle (shaking hands)
  • Black Lives Matter (raised fist)
  • Enlightened fireworks
  • Enlightened symbol
  • Meetup (a pair of mugs)
  • Niantic logo
  • Peace (two hands holding a peace symbol)
  • Resistance fireworks
  • Resistance symbol
  • Target (hexagon with an arrow pointing at it)

Cost:

  • Most beacons cost 1,300 CMU when purchased individually.
  • Fireworks cost 1,000 CMU each.
  • Battle beacons cost 5,000 CMU each and are only available to agents with at least 40M AP.
  • The Black Lives Matter beacon is free but is limited to 15 beacons per agent.
  • Beacons are also available in bundles that decrease the per-beacon cost.

Note that the faction symbol and fireworks beacons can be purchased and deployed by agents of either faction.

The following beacons are no longer available:

  • Toast (April Fools 2019)

There are two beacons that, to our knowledge, have never been deployable by agents:

  • Ingress 1.118.0 added the Lawson Station beacon. This was used to mark Lawson locations for a special promotion in Japan. This beacon was subsequently removed in version 1.122.0.
  • The game resources include a beacon texture for the Initio anomaly logo, but we are unaware of any time when this beacon has been seen in-game.

Deployment

To deploy a beacon, stand within 40 meters of your target portal, then select the desired beacon from your inventory. Tap “Use” to see nearby portals, then select the target portal and tap “Confirm” on the dialog that appears. A maximum of one firework and one other beacon can be deployed at the same time. As they are considered boosts and not mods, they do not occupy a mod slot. When you deploy a beacon, you are awarded 500 AP, and a notice is sent out in the comm. A beacon that has been deployed on a portal will last for four hours, even if the portal is neutralized or flipped.

Deployed beacons are displayed in the scanner above the target portal as a rotating holographic display. Portals with deployed beacons are also ornamented on the intel map:

beacons intel

History

The Toast beacon
  • 25 October 2015: Beacons become available through the Ingress Store.
  • 31 March 2019: Deployed beacons are temporarily replaced with “toast” beacons as part of Niantic’s 2019 April Fools joke. The joke acknowledged a bug in Ingress Prime in which a test message saying “This is a toast notification” appeared in the scanner. (A toast notification is a temporary message panel that pops up and then disappears on its own after a short delay.)
  • 19 April 2019: Player response to the toast beacons prompts Niantic to make them available in the store as a separate beacon for a limited time.
  • 2 July 2020: The fireworks and Black Lives Matter beacons are added.
  • 29 September 2020: Battle beacons are added.
  • 15 September 2022: The Peace beacon was added.