Office Christmas party ideas people enjoy, plus games for the whole team

Good office Christmas party ideas give people something to do together that has nothing to do with work, and a reason to talk to someone from another floor. The ideas below start with where to hold the party: in the office, away from it or on a video call. Then come themes, activities and a long list of games. Each game says what you need, how it works and roughly how long it takes.

An example: on the last Thursday before the winter break, Dagny from accounts stuck a strip of white tape across the floor of the corridor outside her office. At three, the warehouse team came upstairs with a ream of printer paper. Bashir had worked in the same building as Dagny for six years and knew her mostly as a name on invoices. He folded a plane in under a minute and sent it gliding over everyone's heads. Dagny dropped to her knees by the tape to see where it would come down. Tomasz, also from the warehouse, stood to one side with a fresh sheet in his hands, sure his own design would beat them both. Nobody gave a speech, and by four the two teams were arguing about wing folds as if they'd done it for years.

Office Christmas party ideas for the office itself

The easiest party happens where everyone already is. Clear the biggest room, push the desks to the walls and start at three on the last working day before the break. People with evening plans can still make them.

• A games afternoon. Pick three games from the list further down and run them back to back: one loud, one in teams and one where people talk. Ninety minutes is plenty.
• Department doors. Each team decorates its own door or corner with paper, tape and whatever is in the stationery cupboard. On the day, everyone walks round and votes. It takes a few lunch breaks in December, and nobody has to spend anything.
• The snowflake window. All through December, people cut one paper snowflake each between meetings and tape it to the same big window. By the party the window is full, and it makes the backdrop for the team photo.
• Show and tell for grown-ups. Five volunteers each bring one thing from home with a story behind it, like a medal from a fun run or a lamp they rewired. Each gets three minutes. These stories often stick long after the party is forgotten.

Taking the party out of the office

A change of scene helps when people sit at the same desks all year. Pick something everyone can do in normal clothes and at any fitness level, with room to talk.

• Ice skating. An outdoor rink in December is half the fun, and the people who can't skate tend to laugh the most. Plan an hour on the ice and an hour somewhere warm afterwards.
• Bowling. Mix the lanes so every lane has people from at least three teams. The scores matter less than the cheering.
• A winter walk. Two hours on an easy trail, with a halfway stop to warm up. Walking side by side makes talk easier for people who freeze up across a table.
• A class together. Pottery or wreath making puts everyone at the same level, because few people are good at it yet.
• A morning of volunteering. Sorting donations at a food bank or walking dogs at an animal shelter gives people a shared job outside their usual one. Ask early, because December fills fast.

Christmas party ideas for a remote team

When the team lives in four cities, the party happens on a video call, and it needs more structure than one in a room. Keep it to 75 minutes. Pick a time inside everyone's working day, and send the plan a week ahead so people know what to keep within reach. Put people in small rooms of four for most of it, since few people talk freely in a call of thirty.

• Camera scavenger hunt. You need only what people already have at home. The host calls out things like "the oldest thing in your kitchen," "something green" or "the softest thing you own." The first person to hold it up to the camera gets a point. About 15 minutes.
• Whose window is this? You need one photo from each person of the view from where they work, sent to the host before the call. The host shows them one at a time, the team guesses whose view it is, and that person says one thing about where they live. About 20 minutes for twelve people.
• Draw it in thirty seconds. You need paper and a pen. The host says a winter word like "sledding" or "frozen pipe." Everyone draws it in thirty seconds and holds the paper up to the camera at the same moment, and the team votes for the best and the strangest. About 10 minutes.
• One-minute desk tour. You need a laptop or phone camera. Three volunteers each give a one-minute tour of where they work and point out one thing with a story. About 10 minutes.

For more things to call out in the camera hunt, the home list in scavenger hunt ideas works well on a call.

Office Christmas party theme ideas

A theme gives the decorations and the games one idea to hang on. None of these needs special clothes or special food, only paper, lights and a little time.

• Winter cabin. Turn the main lights off and bring in lamps and blankets from home. Cover the windows with paper snowflakes, and play the quiet games in a circle on the floor.
• Winter fair. Each department runs one stall with a simple game. Guess the number of paper clips in a jar, throw a paper snowball into a box from three steps away, or fold a paper fortune teller and read it out. People walk from stall to stall and try every one.
• The founding year. Pick the year the company started. Put up old photos, the first logo and a timeline along one corridor, and let people add a sticky note on the day they joined.
• Cardboard city. Each team builds one building of a winter town from boxes out of the mail room. At the end, the whole town goes together on the floor of the biggest room, with paper snow on the roofs.

A party for friends at home works a little differently, and Christmas party ideas has themes guests can put together from their own closets.

Activities for the slow part of the afternoon

Not everyone wants to compete. An activity gives people something to make side by side, and the talk comes by itself.

• A thank-you wall. Tape a long roll of paper to one wall and leave pens next to it. Everyone writes one thank-you to a colleague from another team, for something specific from this year, and signs it. People read it on their way past all afternoon.
• A card for the people the party misses. Cleaners, security and the night shift are rarely in the room. Make one big card for them, and ask everyone to sign it with one line.
• A photo corner. Hang a plain sheet on a wall, put out a few paper props and set one phone on a stand with a timer. Mixed groups of four take turns, and the photos go in the shared folder that evening.

People waiting for the photo corner can trade lines from Christmas jokes, which are all clean enough for work.

Company Christmas party games for the whole team

These holiday party games for work need no prizes and nothing from outside the building. Nobody performs alone, and every game mixes people from different desks.

• People bingo. You need a pen for each person and a page with a grid of sixteen squares. Each square holds a short fact, like "has worked a night shift," "grew up by the sea" or "can name every plant in the office." Players walk around and find a different colleague for each square, writing their name in. The first full row shouts. About 20 minutes.
• The office scavenger hunt. You need a list of fifteen things to find in the building and a phone for each team. Think "a stapler older than the newest hire," "the plant that has lived here longest" and "a mug with a joke on it." Teams of four from different departments get thirty minutes and photograph each find. About 40 minutes with the photos at the end.
• Paper airplane contest. You need printer paper and a strip of tape on the floor. Everyone gets three minutes to fold one plane, then throws from behind the tape, and the longest flight wins. A second round scores the strangest flight path. About 15 minutes, and it's the game that got Dagny and Bashir talking.
• Four corners. You need four sheets of paper taped in the four corners of the room. Someone reads a this-or-that question, like "early start or late finish?" or "stairs or elevator?", and everyone walks to the corner that matches their answer. Each corner gets thirty seconds to defend its choice. About 15 minutes.
• Draw your job in four boxes. You need paper and pens. Each person draws a normal working day in four boxes, like a comic strip, without any words. Then they swap with someone from another department, who has to explain the drawing out loud. About 20 minutes.
• The binder clip tree. You need a stack of paper, a box of binder clips and a roll of tape for each team. Teams of three get ten minutes to build the tallest Christmas tree that stands on its own. About 15 minutes, and the trees can stay on desks until January.
• Guess the desk. You need photos of six desks, taken the week before with each owner's yes. Show them one at a time and let the room guess whose desk it is from the clues on it. About 10 minutes.
• The team photo, again. You need an old team photo and one phone. Everyone who is in the room recreates it, same poses and same spots, with new people filling in for anyone who has left. About 15 minutes, and the side-by-side picture is the one people share.

For a party with friends at home instead of colleagues, Christmas party games for adults has games for big rooms and small living rooms.

How to mix people from different departments

Left alone, people stand with their own team. A few small rules change that.

1. Make teams before the party. Put a colored dot on each name tag so that every color has one person from each department, and play every team game by color.
2. Use new teams for every game. Swap the dots after the first game, so nobody spends the afternoon with the same three people.
3. Let each department host something. Ask every team to run one stall or one game for everyone else. Hosts talk to everyone who comes by.
4. Pair the newest with the longest-serving. The person who started in October and the one who has been there for twenty years make a good team for the scavenger hunt.

Some friendships at work start at an afternoon like this one. Work friends looks at how a colleague turns into a friend.

Office party ideas for the rest of the year

The games above work in any month. A few dates that make easy office parties:

• A spring picnic in a nearby park on a Friday afternoon, with four corners and a relay race on the grass.
• A summer field day with sack races, a tug of war between floors and a paper airplane final outside.
• A pumpkin carving contest in October, one pumpkin per department.
• The company's birthday, with the founding year theme and the team photo again.
• A games hour on the first Friday of every month, one game from the list each time.

Teams that want one more December day can mark National Ugly Sweater Day, which has a contest and games of its own.

Planning around the people on your team

Every team has people who light up at a scoreboard and people who would rather tell the story of their first week. A good plan has room for both, and the gap between them often comes down to personality type. Here are eight of the 16 types:

• Ideator loves an odd theme and will invent a new rule for the scavenger hunt halfway through.
• Harmonizer notices who is standing alone at the edge of the room and pulls them into a team. The winter cabin is their kind of party.
• Inspector likes clear rules and a fair count. Ask them to keep the score for the bingo.
• Dreamer prefers small groups and quiet things, like the thank-you wall, to the loud games.
• Strategist studies the winning paper airplane and comes back next year with a better fold.
• Guardian makes sure nobody is left out and signs the card for the night shift first.
• Organizer happily runs the timings and the teams, and the afternoon starts on time.
• Encourager loves people bingo and four corners, because both games are about the people in the room.

These are typical patterns from the theory behind the types. They can't tell you how any one colleague will act on the day, so don't treat them as advice for seating or teams. The useful part is the reminder: put a game with points next to a game where people talk, and both kinds of colleague have a good afternoon.

See how you and a colleague work together

Typeza tells two colleagues which relationship type they have. It explains a lot, like why one of you runs the plan while the other runs the jokes. Start with the free personality test, then compare your result with someone from the next desk.

Questions people ask

What are fun holiday party games for work?

People bingo, a paper airplane contest, four corners and an office scavenger hunt work for many teams. They need only paper, tape and phones, and every one of them mixes people from different desks.

How do you plan a Christmas party for a remote team?

Keep it to about 75 minutes on a video call, inside everyone's working day. Use small rooms of four, and pick games that use what people have at home, like a camera scavenger hunt or a thirty-second drawing round.

Written by Virko Kask, founder of Typeza
Written with the help of AI tools.