12 Icebreaker Games for your next event

We have all been there – you arrive at an event not knowing a soul and hide in the corner with your drink, hoping no one notices that you are alone! We have formulated our top 12 icebreaker games for you to use at your next event. Disclaimer: These games will lead to laughter!

1. Knock Knock Game:

Have everyone tell their favorite knock-knock joke. Mobile phone research is absolutely allowed, and laughter is mandatory.

2. Shoe Time:

Have everyone leave one shoe by the door. Redistribute the shoes so everyone has one shoe that doesn’t belong to them. Set a timer for five minutes, and tell everyone to find the shoe’s owner and then strike up a 2-minute conversation, preferably about a subject other than shoes.

3. The Marshmallow Challenge:

Break your meeting attendees into groups of four. Give each group 20 sticks of spaghetti, 1m of tape, 1m of string, and one marshmallow. Ask them to build the tallest freestanding structure they can. Sit back and see what happens.

4. Photo Mania:

Give the group a few minutes to scroll through their phone photos and pick a snapshot they want to share with the group. They can share the photo and explain why they picked it. This will help some personality shine through.

5. Would you Rather:

Start out by posing a question that prompts people to choose a side. Here are some examples:

Which food is better: chocolate or lollies?

Would you rather go camping or to a movie?

What skill is more valuable: Finance or Creativeness

Which is worse: being bored or being too busy?

Have everyone physically divide into sides—chocolate lovers to the right; lolly lovers to the left etc and then allow them to spend some time chatting to that group before asking another question.

6. Post-It note Charades:

Write onto post it notes some common items around the home (or any topic you choose) and each person is given a post it note to stick on their forehead without looking at it. They need to work the room asking yes/no answer questions until they work out what they are. This can also be done with famous people like celebrity heads.

7. Things in Common:

Split people into groups and tell them to find out how many things they have in common. The group who discovers the most things in common wins, so it pays to be persistent and thoughtful. (Physical features and clothing colours do not count!) Each group will announce what they have in common to the rest of the group. Have everyone else raise their hand if they also have the thing in common

8. Name Bingo:

You’ll need to create a name bingo sheet, so basically a 4 x 4 or 5 x 5 grid of personal statements. IE. “has long hair” or “has more than 5 siblings” or “has travelled overseas” etc. Hand these people bingo sheets out to each person and give them a pen, and then send them off to mingle and find people that fit in the gaps. Each player can only use another person once on their sheet. The aim of the game is to collect a name for each segment of their grid and you can provide a prize for the first person to complete if you wish.

9. Mix & Meet:

Get each person to grab some M&M’s (Tell them not to eat them!) Assign a different meaning to each colour:

Blue = family

Green = school

Yellow = music/movies

Red = hobbies

Brown = friends

However many M&Ms they have in their hands, that is how many facts they have to tell. For example, if they have three blue, they would find another person in the group and tell them three facts about their family.

10. Ten in Common:

Split the attendees into groups (this could be by stages, classes etc) Task the groups with finding 10 things that all of them share in common (besides the obvious, e.g., that they are human). You might find out that a bizarre number of attendees have all been to a particular location even though they live no-where near there etc.

11. Human Rock Paper Scissors:

Even if you’re a hobbit, you’ve probably played rock-paper-scissors at least once against a friend. But you probably haven’t applied the game to a group setting as icebreaker games. Here’s how it works: Break the group up into however many teams. Have everyone come up with particular body signals for each move (the weirder the better). Have each team face off in a best-of-five series and see who wins the tournament.

12. Line Up:

Select a few topics (Height, house number, Number of houses they have lived in etc). Ask the group to place themselves in a line in order according to the topic (so for height we would go shortest at the front, tallest at the back). This can be a great one to find out some random facts about other people.

Conclusion

So there you have it – 12 fun icebreaker games that can be played at your next event! Bonus points for working out a way to play each of these virtually during lockdown. If you would like some assistance planning your next event or networking function please reach out to Events Outsourced.