How to evolve Eevee to Espeon, Umbreon & Sylveon in Pokémon Sword & Shield

Meg Bethany Koepp
The Pokémon Company / Game Freak

Eevee is a beloved Pokemon best known for having multiple evolutions. If you want to know how to evolve Eevee into Espeon, Umbreon, or Sylveon in Pokemon Sword & Shield, our guide has you covered. Here’s everything you need to know about how to evolve Eevee in the Gen 8 games.

While the Pokemon Sword & Shield introduced some new features, including Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing, they still house familiar favorites like breeding and evolving.

Eevee and all its Eeveelutions made their way to the Gen 8 titles, but some fans have been scratching their heads at how to obtain Umbreon, Espeon, and Sylveon – we’ve got everything you need to know about how to get them.

How to evolve Eevee into Umbreon

Eevee evolve Umbreon Pokemon
The Dark-type Pokémon evolves from Eevee at night time.

To evolve the lovable critter into Umbreon, you’ll first need to find yourself an Eevee if you don’t have one. Simply head to Route 4, and hunt around in the wheat fields just before you get to Turffield, and one will pop up eventually.

Once you’ve nabbed yourself one, you’ll need to get the Pokémon’s friendship level up. To do this, play with it in your Pokémon Camp, and feed it Curries a few times. You can check the level at any point after reaching Hammerlocke by visiting the boy in the house to the right of the Pokémon Center.

To evolve your Eevee into Umbreon, it needs to be nighttime, and it needs to level up – you can do this with XP candy from Raids, with a Rare Candy, or by battling and catching monsters. To force your game to become night, simply back out into the Nintendo Switch menu and change your system time, before heading to the Wild Area, and evolving your ‘Mon’.

How to evolve Eevee into Espeon

Eevee evolve Espeon Pokemon
Espeon is Eevee’s Psychic-type evolution.

Evolving it into Espeon is very much like Umbreon, except this time you’ll need to evolve it during the daytime rather than at night.

The rules are almost the same: get its friendship up by playing with it and feeding it at your Camp, and then level it up during the day to force it to change its form.

You can also increase friendship quicker if your Pokémon is holding a Soothe Bell, which you can get from a girl in the same house as the boy in Hammerlocke.

How to evolve Eevee into Sylveon

Sylveon Eevee Pokemon Sword Shield evolution
Sylveon is Eevee’s undeniably adorable Fairy-type form.

Sylveon is one of the most coveted Eeveelutions of all because of its cute design, and is also one of the more difficult to evolve into if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Like Espeon and Umbreon, you’ll need to increase the friendship with your Eevee if you wish to evolve it into the adorable monster, but that’s not all – the Eevee also needs to have learned a Fairy-type move.

Luckily, one of Eevee’s early moves, Baby-Doll Eyes, is the type you need, but if you accidentally said no to it, you can get it back by re-learning the move in a Pokémon Center.

That’s everything you need to know about how to evolve Eevee in Pokemon Sword & Shield! For more Gen 8 content, check out our guides below:

Full list of trade codes | How to claim mystery gifts | List of all missing Pokemon | Sword & Shield ‘mon location guide | Type chart: strengths and weaknesses | Pokemon Max Raid event | What is Pokemon Home? | How to get free Ash’s Dragonite code for Pokemon Sword & Shield

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About The Author

Meg was Weekend Editor at Dexerto before leaving us in April 2022.