Office Holiday Party Games
Games for the work Christmas do — the one where your manager is present, half the room has never spoken to the other half, and somebody is on their third drink.
What to play at the work Christmas party
Ordered by how early in the evening they work. Every question bank below is the work-safe one.
1. Would You RatherOffice questions
2+ players10–30 minOne phone
The safest possible opener for a room where people do not all know each other. The office bank asks about work scenarios only — meetings, inboxes, commutes — so nobody has to disclose anything about their personal life to take part. That matters more at a work party than at any other kind.
2. This or ThatOffice questions
2+ players5–15 minOne phone
Faster than anything else here and the right thing while people are still arriving. Rapid-fire pairs, first instinct, no deliberating. It works with a group of four waiting at a table and equally with a group of thirty who have not been called to dinner yet.
3–12 players10–20 minOne phone
The best of these for a team that already works together, because it rewards knowing how your colleagues think. Everyone gets the same word except one player, and the group has to work out who is bluffing. Three to twelve players, so run it per table rather than across the whole room.
4. Most Likely ToWork questions
4–20 players10–20 minOne phone
Genuinely funny with colleagues, and the one to be most careful with. Use the work bank, which sticks to workplace habits rather than personal life. Read the room on seniority before you start — see the note below about managers.
3–10 players20–40 minOne phone
The strongest option if you have a proper sit-down slot, like the gap between courses. It is a real game with scoring rather than a conversation prompt, it rewards being funny rather than being senior, and it gives quieter people a way to win without having to perform.
6. Never Have I EverOffice questions
3–15 players15–30 minOne phone
Include it only with the office bank selected, and know why: the general version of this game is built on personal disclosure, which is exactly wrong at a work event. The office bank rewrites it around unread inboxes and meetings that should have been emails — things nobody minds admitting to their team.
Run the gift exchange from one shared link. Set the budget low enough that the most junior person in the room can spend it without thinking, and note that the organiser cannot see the pairings, so whoever sets it up still gets to play.
Why the office party is harder than it looks
Every other party has one thing this one does not: everybody chose to be there with each other. A work Christmas party is a group assembled by an org chart, containing people at wildly different levels of seniority, some of whom have never had a conversation, all of whom have to see each other again on Monday. Alcohol is usually present. Attendance is nominally optional and actually not.
Games help with this genuinely, because a structured thing to do is much easier than open-ended small talk with someone three levels above you. But the wrong game makes it materially worse, and the failure mode is specific: any game that asks people to reveal something personal puts colleagues in a position they cannot refuse gracefully. Declining to answer in front of your team reads as having something to hide, so people answer, and on Monday they regret it.
The rule that keeps it work-safe
There is one test worth applying to any game before you run it at a work event: could a person take part fully without disclosing anything about their life outside work? If yes, it is safe. If no, it is not, however mild the questions look.
This is why every recommendation above uses a work-specific question bank rather than the general one. It is not squeamishness — the office banks are funnier than the sanitised versions of general questions, because they are written about a shared experience everybody in the room genuinely has. A question about the meeting that should have been an email lands with a work audience in a way that a generic clean question never does.
For a hybrid or fully remote team
A remote Christmas party has the opposite problem to an in-person one: nothing happens unless somebody makes it happen, because there is no room to stand around in. Twenty people on a call with no structure is worse than an awkward pub, not better.
Games work well here for a mechanical reason. One person shares their screen with the question on it, and everyone answers into the call or the chat — the format needs no adaptation at all. Most Likely To works particularly well remotely: instead of pointing, everyone types a name into the chat at the same time on a count of three, which produces the same simultaneous reveal and is arguably clearer than pointing.
Keep remote sessions shorter than you would in person. Forty minutes of a video call is a long time; the same forty minutes in a room is nothing.
Timing it around the meal
Most office parties have the same shape: an arrival period where people cluster with the colleagues they already know, a seated meal, and a looser stretch afterwards. Each wants something different.
| Part of the evening | What works | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Arrivals, people trickling in | This or That | Starts and stops at will, no penalty for joining late |
| Seated, between courses | Fake News Factory | Everyone is at a table with a phone and twenty minutes |
| Seated, whole-table | Would You Rather | No turn order, no scoring, survives being interrupted by food |
| After the meal | Odd One Out | A real game for the people who want one, per table |
| Whole-room moment | Most Likely To | Everyone answers at once, so thirty people take no longer than six |
Group size, honestly
Only some of these scale to a whole room. Odd One Out caps at twelve players and Fake News Factory at ten, which is a real limit rather than a suggestion — beyond it, the waiting between turns kills the game. The question decks have no ceiling because nobody takes a turn in sequence.
For a party of forty, the workable pattern is per-table games rather than one whole-room game. Run the same thing at every table simultaneously and let each table go at its own pace; it feels like a shared activity without requiring forty people to hear one person speak.
The gift exchange
Set the budget by what the most junior person in the room can spend without thinking about it, not by what feels generous to you. Fifteen to twenty-five pounds or dollars is the usual office range — low enough to be non-committal, high enough to be a real gift. Say explicitly whether that is a target or a ceiling, because "around £20" and "no more than £20" produce noticeably different gifts.
Draw names three to four weeks out, and be aware of the one failure mode specific to offices: people leave. If someone hands in their notice between the draw and the party, you need to be able to redraw, so keep the exchange informal enough that this is not a crisis.
What HR will thank you for avoiding
- Anything built on personal disclosure — dating history, family, money, health. Colleagues cannot decline gracefully in front of each other, so they answer and resent it.
- Drinking games, in any form, at a work event. Even as a joke it creates pressure on people who are not drinking, and you will not always know why they are not.
- Anything that singles out the same person repeatedly. Funny once, a pattern by the third time.
- Physical or performance games where opting out is visible. Some people will be dressed for a meal, and some will simply not want to, and neither should have to explain.
- Anything that requires everyone to be paying attention at once in a room of more than about twenty. It will not happen, and the person trying to make it happen has a bad evening.
Common questions
- What are good work-safe games for an office Christmas party?
- Would You Rather and This or That with their office question banks are the safest, because both ask only about work scenarios — meetings, inboxes, commutes — so nobody has to disclose anything personal. Fake News Factory is the best option if you have a seated stretch and want a real game with scoring.
- What makes a game safe for a work event?
- One test: can someone take part fully without revealing anything about their life outside work? Colleagues cannot decline to answer gracefully in front of each other, so a game built on personal disclosure quietly forces answers people regret. Work-specific question banks avoid this entirely.
- What works for a remote or hybrid team party?
- One person shares their screen with the question and everyone answers into the call — no adaptation needed. Most Likely To works especially well: instead of pointing, everyone types a name into the chat at the same time on a count of three. Keep remote sessions shorter than in-person ones.
- How do you run games at a party of thirty or forty people?
- Run the same game at each table simultaneously rather than one game across the whole room. Odd One Out caps at twelve players and Fake News Factory at ten, and those limits are real — beyond them the waiting between turns kills the game. The question decks have no ceiling because nobody takes a turn in sequence.
- How much should the office Secret Santa budget be?
- Set it by what the most junior person can spend without thinking about it — typically fifteen to twenty-five pounds or dollars. Say whether it is a target or a ceiling, and agree it before the draw rather than after, or it becomes a negotiation about one specific person.
- Should managers join in?
- Yes, but they should not pick the game or answer first. Both read as instruction rather than participation, and people will match the level of disclosure the most senior person sets. Hand the phone to someone else and join in when it comes round.