16 Christmas party games that work with a real crowd

The problem with Christmas party games isn't finding them. It's that most lists assume you've got a craft box, a free afternoon and a room full of people who are all equally keen. Real parties have someone's gran, three people who arrived late, and a colleague who would rather be anywhere else.

What follows are 16 games sorted by how much setting up they need, with an honest note on who each one actually suits. Several need nothing at all. A few are worth the preparation. One or two are best avoided in an office, and we've said which.

Games that need nothing

Christmas charades. Film titles, carols and festive phrases, acted out in silence. It's the default for a reason: no props, no preparation, and it scales from six people to thirty. Write the titles on scraps of paper in advance if you want it to run smoothly, or let people make them up on the spot if you don't mind the quality dropping.

Who am I? Stick a festive name on each person's forehead so they can't see it: Buddy the Elf, the Grinch, Mariah Carey, a Brussels sprout. They ask yes or no questions until they work it out. Works brilliantly as an arrival game because people can play it while drifting around the room.

The chain story. One person starts a Christmas story with a sentence, the next adds another, round the circle. It falls apart within four minutes, which is the point.

Reverse charades. The whole team acts and one person guesses. Noisier, faster, and much easier for people who hate the spotlight, because nobody is performing alone.

Twelve days memory game. Each person adds a gift to the list and recites everything before it. Simple, and surprisingly ruthless after about eight rounds.

Games with a few props

The chocolate game. A tin of sweets, a dice, a hat, scarf, gloves, and a knife and fork. Roll a six, put on all the clothing, then eat as many chocolates as you can using only the cutlery until somebody else rolls a six. It's chaotic, it's a genuine British party staple, and it reliably produces the photo of the night.

Pass the parcel, adult edition. The usual rules with better prizes, or a forfeit in every layer. The only skill is in the wrapping, which takes longer than you think, so do it the night before.

Minute to win it rounds. Short physical challenges against a timer: stack sprouts into a tower, move baubles across a table with chopsticks, build the tallest structure from mince pies. Each takes a minute, so you can run six of them in ten minutes and keep everyone watching.

Wrap it badly. Teams wrap a present wearing oven gloves. Judged on the result, which is always terrible.

Pin the nose on the reindeer. The old game with a festive coat of paint. It's for children, mostly, but it does surprisingly well late in a work party.

Guess the weight of the cake. A jar of sweets works too. Put it out at the start, take guesses all night, announce the winner at the end. It costs you nothing and gives latecomers a way in.

Gift games

Secret Santa with stealing. Also known as White Elephant. Everyone brings one wrapped gift to a set budget. Players take turns either opening a new gift or taking one somebody has already opened, and anything stolen twice is frozen. It turns a polite gift exchange into something considerably more competitive.

Bad Santa. Same structure, but the gifts have to be genuinely terrible and the budget is tiny. Easier to run in an office than the earnest version, because nobody has to pretend to like a candle.

The dice gift game. Pile the gifts in the middle. Players roll, and only a six lets you take one. When the pile is gone, a timer starts and people steal from each other until it stops.

Games built around a quiz

The Christmas quiz. The obvious one, and still the most reliable way to occupy a mixed room for half an hour. Keep the rounds short and the subjects broad. Our Christmas quiz round ideas has 14 formats, and there are ready-made questions in our Christmas film quiz and Christmas music sets.

Christmas film bingo. Hand out cards of things that happen in festive films: a snowball fight, a last-minute airport dash, someone learning the true meaning of Christmas. Put a film on in the background and let people mark them off across the evening. It's a game that runs itself, which is the highest praise a party game can get.

Festive music bingo. Cards of song titles instead of numbers, and a playlist. Teams mark off what they hear. It works as background entertainment all night and needs almost no hosting.

What actually makes these work

Timing matters more than the games themselves. People will play almost anything in the first hour and almost nothing after the third, so front-load the games that need concentration and save the daft physical ones for later.

Make everything optional and make that obvious. There is always someone who would rather watch, and forcing them to join in is the single fastest way to make a party worse.

Keep each game under ten minutes. A game people want more of is better than one that outstays its welcome, and you can always run a second round.

For an office party specifically, skip anything that depends on knowing things about colleagues. Baby photo guessing, "two truths and a lie", and quizzes about who's worked there longest all exclude anyone who joined this year, and they can land badly in a mixed team. The games above all work on shared culture rather than inside knowledge, which is why they travel better.

If you want the quiz element to be the centrepiece rather than one game among many, the quiz creator will build the slides and answer sheets, and our guide on how to run a great pub quiz covers the hosting side.