28 Christmas Party Games People Will Actually Play

Every December an office somewhere puts a games slot on the party agenda and then plans no actual games, on the theory that fun materialises after the second drink. Occasionally it does. More often forty people stand around a buffet talking to the colleagues they already sit next to. This is the fix: 28 Christmas party games that real adults will genuinely play, organised by energy level and group size, each with how to run it, what kit it needs, and the specific way it usually goes wrong. No venue advice, no planning theory — purely the games.

First, match the game to the group

A scoping note before the list. This page is the games themselves; if you're still deciding venue, food, budget or format, that's the work Christmas party planning guide — the two are built to be used together. Everything below assumes the party already exists and needs filling.

Low-energy: games you can play sitting down

These run alongside food and drink, work for mixed ages and mobility, and need one confident person with a mic or a loud voice. They are the correct opening act — nobody performs before they've warmed up.

• 1. The Price Is Festive. Read out six festive items — supermarket mince pies, a six-foot Nordmann fir, a kilo of sprouts — and tables write price guesses; closest each round scores. Kit: a list with genuinely current prices. Fails when: the organiser reuses last year's research — check prices the week of the party.
• 2. Name That Sleigh. Play the first two seconds of a Christmas song; teams write title and artist; ten tracks, hardest last. Kit: a speaker, a playlist, someone disciplined on the pause button. Fails when: it runs past ten songs — festive music tolerance is finite.
• 3. Festive Would I Lie to You. Everyone emails the organiser one true, odd Christmas fact about themselves in advance; the host reads each alongside two invented ones and tables vote on the real story. Kit: facts collected a week early, a host who can deadpan. Fails when: facts are gathered on the night.
• 4. Guess the Giver. Run Secret Santa in the open — each gift is unwrapped in turn and the room votes on who bought it before the reveal. Kit: the Secret Santa you were doing anyway. Fails when: the group tops about twenty-five and it drags; split by table.
• 5. The Wrapped Mystery. Pass a heavily wrapped object round each table; teams write a guess from feel alone. A whisk is harder than you'd think. Kit: five odd household objects, a full roll of paper. Fails when: the objects are guessable in one squeeze.
• 6. Cracker Pitch. Each table gets one terrible cracker toy and five minutes to prepare a straight-faced investment pitch for it; the room votes a winner. Kit: crackers, a visible timer. Fails when: there's no hard time cap — one enthusiastic table will present for ten minutes.

Medium-energy: up and about, nobody sweats

• 7. Wrap Battle. Pairs wrap a box using one hand each — one person's left, the other's right — judged on speed and neatness. Kit: a box, paper, tape and scissors per pair. Fails when: pairs share scissors and the queue kills the momentum.
• 8. Pictionary Relay. Teams rotate a new artist every sixty seconds through a stack of festive prompts. Kit: flipchart or A3 pads, fat markers, prompts written beforehand. Fails when: prompts get clever — "nativity" plays, "goodwill" dies on the easel.
• 9. The Chocolate Orange Game. Sit a circle rolling a die; a six sends you to the middle to don hat, scarf and gloves and attack a wrapped chocolate orange with a knife and fork until the next six is rolled. Kit: die, chocolate orange, hat, scarf, gloves, cutlery. Fails when: the circle passes ten people — run two circles in parallel.
• 10. Candy Cane Hook-Off. Hold a candy cane in your mouth hook-down and race to lift other canes off the table edge with it. Kit: a large box of candy canes — one per person, strictly. Fails when: canes get shared; they must not, for reasons that need no elaboration.
• 11. Human Christmas Tree. Teams get three minutes to decorate one volunteer in tinsel, paper and shatterproof baubles, then a judged parade. Kit: tinsel, loo roll, unbreakable baubles, tape. Fails when: judging is by vague applause — appoint a named judge with a made-up title and visible authority.
• 12. Snowman Bowling. Ten part-filled water bottles with marker-pen faces, a wrapped "snowball", one corridor. Kit: bottles, a ball, a marker. Fails when: the bottles are filled to the top — they won't fall, and the game dies with them.

High-energy: clear some floor space

• 13. The Snowball Fight. Tape a line across the floor; two teams get ninety seconds to hurl scrunched-paper snowballs into the other half; fewest on your side at the whistle wins. Kit: two recycling bins' worth of scrap paper, floor tape. Fails when: drinks are still on tables inside the arena. Clear them first, without exception.
• 14. Santa's Sack Relay. Teams relay awkward parcels one at a time across the room in a sack and stack them at the far end; a collapsed stack must be rebuilt. Kit: pillowcases, a dozen empty boxes. Fails when: the floor is polished and colleagues are in socks — this is how incident forms are born.
• 15. Blindfold Sleigh Run. A blindfolded "reindeer" is steered by voice alone through soft obstacles by their team. Kit: a blindfold, cushions or boxes as obstacles. Fails when: runs exceed a minute — keep the course short and the queue moving.
• 16. Reindeer Antlers. In pairs, one wears a pair of tights on their head while the other inflates balloons and stuffs the legs into antlers; two minutes; most convincing rack wins. Kit: tights, balloons. Fails when: participation is compulsory — balloons and dignity both burst; volunteers only.
• 17. Bauble Pong. Cups arranged in a tree shape at each end of a table, ping-pong balls, alternating throws, points not penalties. Kit: cups, balls, a table. Fails when: it turns into a drinking game before dinner — run it dry, score it, and hand out prizes later.

Christmas party games for large groups (40 to 200+)

Big rooms break small games. Past forty guests the maths changes: shared props bottleneck, table-sized games leave most of the room spectating, and anything without a microphone loses the back third immediately. These six are built to scale.

• 18. Whole-Room Heads or Tails. Everyone stands with hands on head or on hips; the MC flips a coin; the wrong half sits; last person standing takes a prize. Kit: a coin and a microphone. Scales to several hundred in five minutes flat. Fails when: there's no mic.
• 19. Rock Paper Reindeer. A standard rock-paper-scissors knockout, except every loser becomes their conqueror's cheering entourage. It ends with two finalists and a deafening room. Kit: none. Fails when: nobody demonstrates the entourage rule first — model it loudly with a volunteer.
• 20. Festive Bingo. Christmas-item cards, called by an MC with a joke per item. Kit: printed cards, pens, a caller sheet. Fails when: it outstays its welcome — three games, then stop, whatever the table at the back demands.
• 21. Table Wars Quiz. Tables compete as fixed teams over four short rounds run between courses, with runners collecting answer sheets. Kit: printed sheets, pens, a scorer. A hired quiz host typically runs £150–£300 (mainstream UK market, August 2026); a confident colleague with a script is free. Fails when: a round is called during food service — never compete with a plate.
• 22. The Grand Jumper Walk-Off. The Christmas jumper contest reborn as a judged catwalk with categories — most effort, most homemade, most cursed. Kit: a speaker and a corridor between tables. Fails when: it's sprung on the night; put the categories on the invite so people bring their A-game.
• 23. The Stage Scavenger Hunt. The MC calls items — a receipt from today, a photo of a pet, someone born in December — and the first table to deliver one to the stage scores. Kit: a mic, a prepared list, small prizes. Fails when: items require leaving the room; keep everything findable at the table.

No props, no budget, no notice

Five games that run on nothing but voices — for the office party where the budget went on food, the venue that banned sticky tape, or the moment at 9pm when the room clearly wants one more. If these verbal formats suit your team year-round, the structured workplace games guide is the non-festive companion.

• 24. The A–Z Circle. Round the circle, each person names a festive thing for the next letter, A to Z; hesitate past three seconds and you're out. Fails when: X arrives — house-rule it, or let it be the eliminator it was born to be.
• 25. Two Truths and a Christmas Lie. Two true festive stories and one invention each; the group votes. Fails when: people go first with no thinking time — announce it ten minutes before you start.
• 26. The Counting Game. The group counts to twelve; anyone may say the next number, but two voices at once restarts from one. Twelve sounds easy. It is not. Fails when: nothing fails. That's the game.
• 27. Who's in My Cracker. One person silently picks a famous, loosely festive figure; the group gets twenty yes-or-no questions. Fails when: picks get obscure — rule that half the room must plausibly know the person.
• 28. Never Have I Ever, HR Edition. Stand-up-sit-down with pre-written, work-safe festive prompts — never have I ever regifted, fake-loved a present, eaten a tree decoration. Fails when: the prompt list is improvised after drinks. Write it sober. Do not crowdsource it.

When to bring in a hosted centrepiece

All 28 games share one hidden cost: a colleague has to run them, and that colleague is working the party, not attending it. Past forty-odd guests, or when the games slot is the party rather than a garnish to it, hiring the centrepiece is often the honest move. Declared interest — this next one is ours: we run hosted VR sports tournaments (golf, racing, archery, clay shooting) at venues UK-wide, with the host, leaderboard, travel and setup included; evening events start at £395 for two hours, and a station needs a 3m x 3m space and a socket, which most function rooms can manage. Details on the VR Christmas party page if that shape fits your room. Whether it's us or a quiz host, the arithmetic is the same: the fee buys back the organiser's evening, and the organiser is usually the person who most deserves the party.

Running the games without flattening the party

• Time the slot, not just the game. After the first drink, before the third. A room stone-sober won't volunteer; a room past its third has stopped following rules of any kind.
• Voluntary, always. Press-ganging produces the folded-arm perimeter every organiser dreads. Spectacle games need an audience anyway — let the reluctant be the crowd.
• Give non-players jobs. Judge, scorer, coin-flipper, caller. People who'd rather die than wear tights on their head will happily hold a clipboard with menace.
• Prizes small and silly. A £4 trophy gets displayed on a desk until March; a £40 voucher gets audited by the losing team. Cheap and daft beats generous and contested.
• Keep the winners' list. The games that land in December get requested again — several of these transplant straight into the bleak-midwinter slot, and the January work party guide makes the case for exactly that.