Nominations

Agents at level 10 or higher can nominate points of interest to become portals. Nominated portals are vetted by other agents in Niantic Wayfarer before being added to the portal network.

You can make up to 14 portal nominations in a two-week period. Once you have exceeded that limit, you will have to wait until at least one of those nominations is two weeks old before you can submit another. To start the nomination process, select “Nominations” from the Ops menu while you are within 25 km of the portal’s location, then follow the steps in the portal nomination wizard:

Choose Something to Become a Portal

Drag the map with your finger until the purple marker is located over the portal. You can use the toggle in the upper-left to switch between satellite and map view, and the button at the lower-right will move the marker to your current location. Use a pinch gesture to zoom in and out. Tap “Confirm” when the marker is correctly positioned.

You can find the criteria for what constitutes a valid portal on the Ingress Help site, and the Niantic Wayfarer Help (Wayfarer access required). You should read both for full details, but in summary, all valid portals must be at least one of the following:

  • A location with historical significance, educational value, or a cool story
  • A cool piece of art or unique architecture
  • A hidden gem or hyper-local spot
  • A public park
  • A public library
  • A public place of worship
  • A major transportation hub

Any of the following will make a candidate invalid:

  • The candidate has no safe pedestrian access. (You can’t walk up to it safely.)
  • The candidate is a natural feature. (Signs about natural features that are otherwise valid are okay.)
  • The candidate is a person or group of people, body part or animal.
  • The candidate is a temporary or seasonal installation.
  • The candidate is located on private residential property (including farms).
  • Agents attempting to visit the candidate may interfere with the operations of a fire station, police station, hospital, military base, industrial site, power plant or air traffic control tower.
  • The candidate is on the grounds of a primary or secondary school.
  • The candidate is a duplicate of an existing portal.
  • The candidate is too close to an existing portal, even if it’s not a duplicate.

Take a Photo of the Portal

The scanner will launch your camera app to take a photo. This will be the photo that represents the portal in the scanner. You can also select a photo taken previously, which is helpful if the portal is located in an area where signal may be weak. After taking the photo, it will be cropped to a square and displayed. Tap “Use Photo” if it looks good, or “Retake” if you want to try again.

Make sure that it is clear from the photo why the nominee makes a good portal. Your nomination will be rejected if the portal photo violates any of the following guidelines:

  • It must be taken by the submitting agent.
  • It cannot have a watermark.
  • It must be of good quality. (Niantic recommends that the photo be taken “during the day at a reasonable distance and that gives an idea for the scale and placement.”)
  • It must not contain a live person’s face or show a group of people near the portal (unless the candidate’s popularity makes it impossible to do so).
  • It shouldn’t be a picture of an image.
  • It must not contain a clearly-visible license plate.
  • It must not contain any content which violates the Ingress Terms of Service.

Show the Surrounding Area

In order to assist reviewers in determining whether the nominee is a safe location and has enough room for agents to gather, you will be asked to submit an additional photo. This would typically be further back from the portal so that reviewers can see what the area around the portal looks like. As with the portal photo itself, it will be cropped square and displayed. Tap “Next” to use that photo or “Retake” to try again.

Input Your Nomination

Next you will write a title and a description for the portal. After filling in the title and description, tap “Next.”

Niantic has provided some guidelines when it comes to portal titles and descriptions:

  • It is preferred to use the official local language when nominating a portal.
  • If the object or location portrayed has an official name, that should be used as the portal’s title.
  • Titles and descriptions must not include real names, codenames, faction or group names, emoji, emoticons, HTML, or URLs.
  • Descriptions must be written by the submitting agent, not copied from other sources such as Wikipedia.
  • Titles and descriptions must not contain any content which violates the Ingress Terms of Service.
  • Descriptions are optional but encouraged, and should include detailed information that other players might find interesting about the portal.

Review and Submit Your Nomination

The scanner will display the title, photo, description, and location that you have provided for the portal. You should take this opportunity to review your nomination. If you wish to change anything, click the pencil icon next to that item. You will also be asked to explain why your nomination is important, providing more context for reviewers. Once everything looks good, tap “Confirm” to submit your nomination.

You should soon receive an email confirming that your nomination was received. After it has gone through the review process (which could take some time), you’ll get another email telling you whether the nomination was accepted or rejected. If it was accepted, it will be added to the portal network, and you will receive 1,000 AP and a key to the new portal.

History

  • 14 March 2013: The scanner is updated to allow agents to submit new portals to Niantic.
  • 14 August 2014: Portal submission becomes available for iOS users.
  • 3 September 2015: Niantic suspends portal submissions.
  • 22 August 2017: A teardown of Ingress 1.122.0 reveals that changes have been introduced into the scanner toward enabling portal submissions at a future date.
  • 25 September 2017: Portal submissions are re-enabled for agents at level 11 or higher.
  • 10 November 2017: Threshold for portal submission is reduced to level 10.
  • 5 November 2018: Ingress Prime is released, but does not include portal submission or editing. Shortly afterward, Niantic releases Scanner [REDACTED], the original scanner version, to support continued portal submission and editing until the functionality has been migrated to Ingress Prime.
  • 2 April 2019: Portal nominations beta testing in Ingress Prime is enabled for Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, and South Korea. The feature is now presented in a “wizard” format, and includes information about how to make a good nomination. The process now also requires that a second photo of the surrounding area be submitted so that reviewers can ensure that the portal is safe for pedestrians and has room for agents to gather.
  • 15 May 2019: Portal nominations go live worldwide. Portal editing is still unavailable in Prime.
  • 20 June 2019: Portals can be nominated using photos taken previously, and the distance from the nomination is increased to 25 km. This change was made to better support nomination of portals in areas with poor signal.