The best Friendsgiving games are the ones only your group could play: guessing who cooked which dish, a quiz about the friends at the table, and awards for the year everyone just had together.
Friendsgiving has one big advantage over the family version. Nobody is there out of obligation, and everyone at the table has a shared history full of material: the holiday that went wrong, the flat with the mould, the ex nobody liked.
The games here lean into that. There are thirteen of them, with rules, timings and what you need, followed by twenty five questions to build a round about your own friend group, and a short list of things that reliably kill the evening.
Ask every guest for one embarrassing group photo and two facts about themselves when you send the potluck sign up. It takes them a minute, and it is all the material most of the games below need.
A family Thanksgiving is often about managing the room: keeping the kids busy, steering round the uncle. A Friendsgiving is the opposite problem. Everyone is happy to be there, so the risk is not conflict but drift, where the evening splits into three separate conversations and the people who only know the host sit quietly at the end of the table.
The fix is games that pull the whole table into one conversation and give the newer friends something to join in with. Guessing games work, because a newcomer can guess as well as anyone. Quizzes about the group work, as long as the questions are not all about one trip that half the room missed.
Most of these suit adults, and several were built for large groups of twelve or more, which is where potluck Friendsgivings usually end up once everybody brings a plus one.
01
Every potluck dish goes on the table with a number instead of a name. Guests eat, then fill in a card matching each dish to its cook. The host reveals the answers over dessert. Points for each correct match, and a special mention for whoever brought something shop bought and plated it convincingly.
Tip: Ask cooks not to announce their dish on arrival. At least one person will anyway.
02
A quiz about the people at the table, played in teams with the long standing friends split up. Use the prompts further down this page, fill in the blanks with your group's own history, and read them between the main course and pudding. Mix old history with this year so the newer friends can score too.
03
Hand out ballots with ten categories as people arrive: most likely to forget their own birthday party, best glow up of the year, most dramatic group chat message, most likely to bring a salad and call it a dish. Everyone votes secretly. Count them while the pie is served and announce the winners like an awards ceremony, acceptance speeches compulsory.
04
The host reads a prompt and on three everybody points at the friend who fits. Most likely to leave without saying goodbye. Most likely to have already put up a Christmas tree. Most likely to still owe someone money from a holiday in 2019. Whoever gets the most fingers can defend themselves for ten seconds before the next one.
Tip: Prepare prompts that land on different people. If the same friend wins five in a row, it has stopped being a game.
05
A toast with a sting. Each guest raises a glass to the person on their left with one sincere thank you and one gentle complaint: "Thank you for driving me to the airport at four in the morning. But you did play the same album both ways." Go round the whole table. It gets the gratitude bit of Friendsgiving done without anyone having to be earnest for more than a sentence.
06
Each player tells three things that happened to them this year, two true and one invented, and the table votes on the lie. Restricting it to this year stops the old friends winning on decades of stories and gives everybody fresh material, including the plus ones nobody knows yet.
07
Collect a few old photos of the group in advance: a festival, a graduation, a truly bad night out. At the party, the people in each photo recreate it as closely as possible, poses, facial expressions and whatever props the kitchen can supply. Put the old and new side by side in the group chat. It is the thing people will still be sending each other next year.
08
Everyone writes five names on slips: celebrities, mutual friends, in-jokes. The same bowl of names is played in three rounds. In round one you describe them in words, in round two you use one word only, in round three you act them out. By round three the whole room knows the names and the in-jokes pile up. It is the best game here for a big group.
09
Near the end of the night, or on a Friendsgiving brunch the next day, split into teams and give each a selection of leftovers. Twenty minutes to make something new: turkey tacos, stuffing waffles, a pie milkshake. A judge who did not cook scores taste, presentation and nerve.
10
Serve a sliver of each dessert unlabelled. Everyone ranks them, and separately guesses which friend made which. Nobody is allowed to ask for seconds of their own pie to help its score.
11
Wrap three bottles of wine, or cider, or anything else, in foil, and pour a small taste of each. Everyone ranks them from cheapest to dearest. The self declared wine expert at the table is almost always the one who gets it wrong, which is the whole reason to play.
12
Everyone brings something unwanted from their own home, wrapped. Draw numbers. The first player opens a gift, and each player after that can open a new one or steal an opened one. A gift can only be stolen twice. Expect heavy competition for a novelty mug and nobody wanting the candle.
13
For the late part of the evening when everyone is on the sofa. A narrator deals secret roles: a couple of werewolves, a seer, and villagers. Each night the werewolves quietly pick a victim, each day the village argues and votes out a suspect. Friends who know each other well are much worse at it than they think.
Quizriella
The friend group quiz is the best game on this page and the hardest to prepare, because one person has to write it, knows every answer, and cannot play. Quizriella removes that problem.
The host sends one invite code to the group chat. Every friend writes questions about the others in secret, on their own phone in a browser, and nobody sees the pot until it is on screen. It becomes a presenter-led game show with hot seats, buzzer races, a wheel of dares and breaking news bulletins about whoever is losing, played from the host's phone or on the TV.
Hot seat
One player alone, the rest waiting to steal
Buzzers
Ten seconds, panic starts at three
Wheel of fate
Lands on a dare nobody volunteered for
Breaking news
A bulletin about whoever is losing
These are prompts, not a finished quiz. Swap in your own names and history, keep the ones that fit your group, and read the best twenty. The note under each says what makes it work.
Where did this group first all end up in the same room?
Old friends argue about this for longer than any other question.
Who has moved house the most times since we met?
Have the number ready. Someone will dispute it.
Whose flat had the worst kitchen, and what was living in it?
Extra point for naming the creature.
Who was the last one of us to get a smartphone?
Works best when the answer is still slightly defensive about it.
Name the restaurant where the group had its worst ever meal.
Accept any answer that makes the table groan.
Which of us has the longest unbroken streak in the group chat without sending a message?
Screenshot evidence welcome.
Who cried at a film this year, and which film was it?
Two points, one for the person and one for the film.
Who is the group's designated driver, and who has never once done it?
Both halves must be correct.
What was the name of the pub quiz team we had and why was it chosen?
Swap in any shared team, band or group chat name.
Which friend owns the most mugs?
Ask them to count before the party.
Who has the oddest job title here, and what does it actually involve?
Points for the title, bonus if anyone can explain the job.
On which holiday did someone lose their passport, and whose was it?
Every group has one. If yours does not, use a lost phone.
Who would survive longest without their phone?
A vote, not a fact. Let the chosen person argue.
What did [host] cook the first time they had us all round?
A good opener for the host, who can then confirm or deny.
Which of us has met a celebrity, and who was it?
Minor celebrities count. Regional weather presenters count double.
Who fell asleep first at the last group sleepover or trip?
Swap in the most recent trip everyone went on.
Whose karaoke song is always the same, and what is it?
If they are at the table, make them hum the first line.
Who brought the plus one this year, and how did they meet?
A gentle way to put the newcomer in the spotlight for the right reasons.
What is the one story this group will never let one person forget?
Read it out, the room names the victim.
Who is most likely to have already bought their Christmas presents?
Check with them first. The answer is usually surprising.
What was the first thing we all ever did together as a group?
Good for groups formed at uni, work or a shared house.
Which of us took up a new hobby this year, and has it lasted?
Sourdough, running and pottery are the usual suspects.
Who sends the longest voice notes?
Have one ready to play as evidence, if they agree.
If this group was stranded on an island, who would take charge, and who would eat the supplies?
Two answers, both voted on.
What will we all be doing at next year's Friendsgiving?
Not scored. Write the answers down and read them out next year.
Do not build the whole quiz around one trip or one era of the friendship. Anyone who was not there sits out every question.
Do not start a long game while half the table is still in the kitchen. Wait until everyone is sitting, or start with something they can join halfway.
Do not let a roast become a pile on. If the same person is the answer three times running, move to a question about somebody else.
Do not spring a game on people mid conversation with no warning. Mention at the start of dinner that there will be a quiz, so nobody is caught halfway through a story.
Do not make the plus ones play a game that is entirely inside jokes. Pair them with an old friend in a team.
Do not run every game yourself. Hand the ballots to one friend and the quiz to another, and you get to eat.
Thanksgiving games for the whole family, from the kids' table up
Thirteen Thanksgiving games for families and large groups, sorted by group size and time, plus 25 Thanksgiving trivia questions with the answers included.
103 most likely to questions for every kind of room
Most likely to questions for friends, family, kids, siblings, work, couples and girls night or hen do, with how to play and the questions to leave out.
Who knows me best questions: 98 to settle it properly
Who knows me best questions for family, friends, birthdays and mum vs dad, plus funny and hard mode rounds, with how to play and how to score it fairly.
Games like Jackbox you play on your phone
Party games like Jackbox that use phones as controllers: free browser options with no console, the paid ones worth buying, and which suits a large group.
Party games for groups who know each other
More games that run on shared history.
The best party games for groups
Apps and classics for a big crowd.
Everyone brings a dish to a shared meal, usually in the weeks around Thanksgiving, and the evening runs on food, drinks and a couple of games. Guess who made each dish, a quiz about the friend group and a round of superlatives are the most popular, because they pull the whole table into one conversation.
Salad bowl, guess who made it, superlatives and a team quiz all work with twenty or more people, because they either run in two teams or let everyone play at once. Werewolf works up to about twenty, after which the discussion gets unmanageable.
Cheap or dear wine tasting, a terrible gift swap, a leftover cook off and the "thanks, but" toast are all good adult activities. They are social rather than competitive, so they suit a table that wants to talk as much as play.
Choose games where knowing people is not required, such as guess who made it, salad bowl or two truths and a lie about this year. For a quiz about the group, play in teams and pair each newcomer with an old friend, so they get the answers and the backstory at the same time.
Twenty is about right for a dinner, which runs to around thirty minutes with arguing. Collecting three or four questions from each guest in advance is easier than writing them all yourself, and means you get to play too.
Start a background game such as superlatives or guess who made it when people arrive, play the quiz between the main course and dessert, and keep a sofa game like werewolf or salad bowl for later in the evening. Games announced after everyone has moved to the sofa rarely get going.
Quizriella is built for it. Each friend opens an invite link and writes questions about the others in secret, then the host presents it as a game show from a phone or a TV. It is free to play with avatars, and nothing needs installing.
Drop the invite code in the Friendsgiving chat alongside the potluck list. Everyone writes a few questions about the others, and after dinner you play it as a game show. Free to start, works in any browser.
Play it as a game showFree to play. Players join from their phones.
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