How to Make Friends as an Adult: A Practical UK Guide

How do you make friends as an adult?

You make friends as an adult by repeating time with the same people, not by meeting lots of new ones. That is the whole method, and almost everything else in this guide is a way of making it easier to do.

At school and university, friendship happened to you. You saw the same faces every day, nobody had to arrange anything, and hours piled up without effort. Adult life takes that away quietly. You change jobs, move towns, start working from home, have children, or your old friends do. We have written about why making friends after 30 feels so hard, and the short version is that the problem is structural, not personal.

This guide is about the other half: the how. It is written for people in the UK, and it sticks to things you can actually do this month.

How long does it take to make a friend?

It takes longer than most of us expect. In a 2018 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas asked adults who had recently moved, and students who had just started university, how much time they had spent with new people and how close they had become.

Two details in Hall's findings matter more than the headline numbers:

• Hours spent working together count for less. Time spent hanging out, joking and chatting moved people towards friendship. Time spent in the same office did not count for nearly as much. This is why so many "work friends" fade when one of you leaves.
• The hours have to be fairly close together. Fifty hours spread across five years does not feel the same as fifty hours in a few months.

So a one-off networking drink, however pleasant, does not give you enough hours. A weekly group gets you there. Two hours a week with the same people adds up to around 100 hours in a year, which puts you in friendship territory.

Is it normal to have no friends as an adult?

It is more common than people admit, and nothing to be ashamed of. In the government's Community Life Survey for 2024/25, 7% of adults in England said they felt lonely "often or always". The figure was highest among 16 to 24-year-olds, at 9%. The same survey found that 95% of adults had at least one person they could really count on to listen. Many people in that gap are not isolated. They simply have fewer friends, or less close ones, than they would like.

If you have moved somewhere new, split up with a partner, retired, or had a baby, a thin social life is a predictable result of that change, not a verdict on you.

Where can adults meet new friends in the UK?

The best places are the ones that bring the same people together week after week, with something to do so the conversation doesn't have to carry the whole evening. Here are the options that work best across the UK, starting with the ones that need the least confidence.

parkrun: free, every Saturday, anywhere

parkrun is a free, timed 5k held every Saturday morning in parks across the UK. You can walk, jog, run or volunteer. Newcomers underrate the volunteering: marshals and timekeepers stand still, chat to each other and to runners, and are rostered alongside the same regulars week after week. Most events have a café where people go afterwards, and that is where friendships start. If you are in Devon, our guide to running clubs and parkruns in Exeter lists the local events.

u3a: learning groups for people no longer in full-time work

u3a (it used to be called the University of the Third Age) is a UK-wide movement of locally run groups for people who are retired or semi-retired. Members run the groups themselves, covering anything from languages and history to walking, bridge and wine appreciation. Groups are small and meet regularly, so they suit friendship well. You can find your nearest one on the u3a website.

Men's Sheds

Men's Sheds are community workshops where people, mostly but not only men, make and mend things side by side. The UK Men's Sheds Association is a registered charity with a directory of sheds on its website. Its 2023 Health and Wellbeing Survey reported that 96% of attendees felt less lonely since joining. Working side by side suits people who find face-to-face chat hard. You talk while you are doing something else, and it builds from there.

Volunteering

Volunteering gives you a role, a reason to be there and a regular shift with the same people, which covers most of what adult friendship needs. GoodGym, a charity that combines running, walking and cycling with community tasks, operates in dozens of UK areas. Local charities, food banks, community gardens and heritage railways all run on regular teams.

Clubs, classes and teams

Choirs, climbing walls, five-a-side leagues, book groups, pottery courses, language classes and amateur dramatics all give you the two things you need: a fixed time and the same people. Choose a course that runs for several weeks over a one-day workshop, and a league over a pay-and-play session.

Apps: Meetup and Bumble BFF

Meetup lists local interest groups and is most useful for finding the regular ones. Look for groups that meet weekly or fortnightly and have organisers who stick around. Bumble BFF uses the dating-app format to match people looking for platonic friends. Apps are fine for getting you through the door. They cannot supply the repeated hours, so treat a good first meeting as the start of a regular plan, not the end of the job.

Shared meals

Eating together is one of the oldest ways of turning strangers into friends. A meal gives you a reason to sit down, a natural two hours of conversation and something to talk about when the talk runs dry. This is why we started Dinners With Friends: small, hosted dinners where you sit with the same few people for a whole evening, rather than shouting across a bar. You can also start your own, and our guide to building a monthly supper club with friends shows you how.

How do you turn an acquaintance into a friend?

You turn an acquaintance into a friend by suggesting a second, smaller plan outside the place where you met. Most adult friendships stall at this point. Two people enjoy each other's company at the running club or the choir for months, and neither one suggests anything else.

Some ways to take that step without it feeling odd:

1. Make it specific. "We should get a coffee sometime" rarely happens. "I'm going to the market after this on Saturday, do you want to come?" often does.
2. Attach it to something already happening. A walk after parkrun, a drink after rehearsal, lunch before the class. It costs the other person almost nothing to say yes.
3. Make it small. Coffee, a walk or a pint. Save the full day out for later.
4. Follow up once, then leave it. If they can't make it, suggest one other date. If that falls through too, drop it for now and keep being friendly at the group.

We go into this in more depth in from stranger to friend.

Why do I always have to be the one who reaches out?

Because someone has to, and most adults wait for the other person. There is research to back this up: a 2022 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Peggy Liu and colleagues found that people consistently underestimated how much others appreciated hearing from them out of the blue. The other person is usually pleased, not put out.

Treat being the initiator as a role you take on for a while, not a sign that nobody cares. Once a friendship has some history, it tends to even out. If after a few months it is still entirely one-sided, that tells you something, and you can put your energy elsewhere.

How do you make friends as an introvert?

Choose settings where the activity does most of the work. Side-by-side activities such as walking groups, Men's Sheds, volunteering shifts, craft classes and parkrun marshalling let you spend time with people without keeping up a conversation the whole time. Small groups suit introverts better than big parties, and a seated dinner with four or five people is often easier than a room of fifty.

Plan for recovery, too. One regular commitment you actually go to beats three you keep skipping. There is more on this in an introvert's guide to building a social life you actually enjoy.

What if I'm busy, working from home or new to a town?

• If you are short of time: pick one weekly commitment and protect it like a work meeting. Our guide to making friends when your diary is rammed has more ideas for this.
• If you work from home: build in a few hours around other people each week, such as a co-working day, a class or a lunchtime walk group. Remote work removes the chance encounters that used to start friendships.
• If you have just moved: say yes to almost everything for the first three months, then keep going to the two or three things where you met people you liked.
• If you are going alone: arrive early, when groups are smaller and people are more open, and ask the organiser to introduce you to someone.

A realistic three-month plan

• Weeks 1 to 2: choose one weekly activity and one monthly one. Sign up for both.
• Weeks 3 to 8: go every time. Learn names. Ask one follow-up question about something someone told you last week.
• Weeks 6 to 10: suggest one small plan outside the group to someone you get on with.
• Weeks 10 to 12: repeat with a second person, and suggest a small group plan such as a pub quiz team or a dinner.

By the end, you will not have a best friend. What you will have is a handful of people you are well on the way to getting to know, which is how every adult friendship starts.