How to Make Friends at Events When You Don't Know Anyone

The Moment Before You Walk In

You know the feeling. You're standing outside a venue where an event is about to start. Through the window or the open door, you can hear conversation, laughter, the clink of glasses. People are already talking. Groups have already formed. And you don't know a single person inside.

Your stomach tightens. A voice in your head starts negotiating: maybe you could just go home. You've had a long week. Nobody would notice if you didn't show up. You could always come to the next one.

If you've ever felt this, you're in overwhelming company. Social approach anxiety — the specific discomfort of initiating contact with strangers — is one of the most common human experiences. It's not a sign that something is wrong with you. It's a sign that your brain is doing what brains have done for millennia: scanning an unfamiliar social environment for potential threats.

The irony is that the people already inside that room felt exactly the same thing ten minutes ago. They just happened to arrive first.

Why This Matters More Than It Used To

Making friends as an adult has never been particularly easy, but research suggests it's becoming harder. Robin Dunbar's work on friendship formation shows that it takes roughly 200 hours of quality interaction to turn a stranger into a close friend — and those hours need to happen within a relatively concentrated period. Sporadic catch-ups every few months don't build the same depth as regular, repeated contact.

The challenge is that adult life systematically strips away the conditions that made friendship effortless when we were younger. School and university provided daily proximity, shared experiences, and repeated unplanned interactions. After we leave those environments, we have to actively create the conditions that friendship requires. Events — dinners, meetups, classes, social gatherings — are one of the most effective ways to do that.

But only if you actually walk through the door. And only if you know how to navigate those first uncertain minutes once you're inside.

Strategy One: Arrive Slightly Early

This is perhaps the most counterintuitive piece of advice, because every instinct tells you to arrive fashionably late, to slide in when the room is already buzzing and you can blend into the crowd.

Don't.

Arriving early is one of the most powerful things you can do when you don't know anyone. Here's why: when you arrive early, the room is still sparse. Other early arrivals are typically standing alone or in twos, not yet locked into intense group conversations. The social dynamics are fluid and approachable.

More importantly, each person who arrives after you enters a room where you're already established. Psychologically, you shift from being the newcomer to being one of the people already there. This is a subtle but significant difference. New arrivals will often approach you, because you look settled and approachable. You become part of the social fabric of the event rather than someone trying to weave themselves into it.

Early arrivals also tend to include the hosts and organisers, who are usually excellent people to chat with. They know everyone, they're invested in making sure people have a good time, and they can introduce you to others.

Strategy Two: Position Yourself Near the Gathering Points

At any social event, there are certain spots where conversation happens naturally: near the bar, by the food, at the entrance where people are arriving. These are the social hubs of any gathering, and positioning yourself near them puts you in the path of natural interaction.

Standing by the food table, for instance, gives you an effortless conversation starter. "Have you tried these? They're incredible." "Any idea what's in this?" "I'm trying to decide between these two — any recommendations?" These are low-stakes, easy openings that don't require you to walk up to a stranger and introduce yourself cold.

The bar serves a similar function. People queue, they wait, they make small observations. The physical proximity creates a natural excuse to talk.

What you want to avoid is the other instinct that social anxiety produces: retreating to a corner, standing against a wall, or burying yourself in your phone. These positions make you physically and psychologically inaccessible. They signal to others that you don't want to be approached — even if the opposite is true.

Strategy Three: Look for the Other Person Who's Alone

Here's something that changes the game entirely when you reframe it: you're not the only person in that room who doesn't know anyone. At most social events, there are several people navigating the same uncomfortable feeling of standing alone in a crowd of strangers.

Find them.

Look for the person checking their phone with a slightly too-casual air. The one nursing a drink by the edge of the room. The one who keeps glancing around, hoping someone will make the first move. That person is praying for someone to approach them. Be that someone.

Walking up to a person who's visibly alone is far easier than trying to break into an established group conversation. And the gratitude you'll encounter — though they'll never say it out loud — creates an immediate bond. You become the person who rescued them from standing alone, and that's a powerful foundation for a connection.

A simple "Mind if I join you? I don't know anyone here either" is one of the most effective opening lines in any social setting. The shared vulnerability of both being alone creates instant common ground.

Strategy Four: Ask Open Questions (and Actually Listen)

Once you've started a conversation, the temptation is to fill every silence, to perform, to be entertaining. Resist this. The research on what makes people feel connected is clear and consistent: being genuinely curious about the other person is far more effective than being impressive yourself.

The Harvard question-asking study found that people who ask more questions — particularly follow-up questions — are rated as significantly more likeable. Follow-up questions work because they demonstrate that you were actually listening, not just waiting for your turn to talk.

Start with something easy and context-appropriate:

• "What brought you here tonight?"
• "Have you been to one of these before?"
• "How do you know the host?" (or, more usefully, "I don't know anyone here — do you?")

Then listen to the answer and follow up on it. If someone says they came because a friend recommended it, ask about the friend. If they say they've been before and loved it, ask what made it special. If they say they're new in town, ask where they moved from and what brought them.

The art of good conversation isn't having brilliant things to say. It's making the other person feel heard. We explore this in much more depth in our guide to moving past small talk, but the core principle is simple: genuine curiosity is magnetic.

Strategy Five: Give Genuine Compliments

There's a difference between flattery and a genuine compliment, and most people can tell which one they're receiving. A genuine compliment works because it does two things simultaneously: it makes the other person feel good, and it signals that you're paying attention.

The key word is genuine. "Great shirt" is fine if you actually mean it. But "I love how you described that — you're a really good storyteller" lands differently because it's specific, it's earned, and it shows you were listening.

Complimenting someone's ideas, their perspective, or the way they told a story is almost always more powerful than complimenting their appearance. It tells them you value who they are, not just how they look.

One study on interpersonal attraction found that receiving a compliment activates the same reward centres in the brain as receiving a financial reward. A well-placed, genuine compliment can transform a polite exchange into a memorable interaction.

Strategy Six: Accept the Awkwardness

Here's something nobody tells you about meeting new people at events: it's supposed to feel a bit awkward. Every first conversation with a stranger has a slightly stilted, tentative quality. That's not failure — that's the process working.

The 2018 Yale study on the liking gap, led by researcher Erica Boothby, found that after conversations with strangers, people consistently underestimated how much the other person liked them. We walk away replaying our stumbles, our pauses, the moments where we felt we fell short. But the other person? They almost certainly enjoyed the conversation more than we think they did.

Accepting that the first few minutes of any new conversation will feel slightly uncomfortable takes an enormous amount of pressure off. You don't need to be brilliant. You don't need to be effortlessly charming. You just need to be present, warm, and willing to stay in the conversation long enough for it to find its rhythm.

Most good conversations don't start well. They start awkwardly and become good. The people who make friends at events aren't the ones who never feel awkward — they're the ones who feel the awkwardness and keep going.

Strategy Seven: Have an Exit Strategy (and a Re-Entry One)

One of the hidden anxieties of talking to strangers at events is the fear of getting stuck — locked into a conversation you can't gracefully leave, or struggling to find someone else to talk to once you do.

Having a few polite exit lines ready removes this pressure entirely:

• "I'm going to grab another drink — it was lovely chatting with you."
• "I should go and say hello to a few more people, but I'd love to continue this later."
• "I'll let you mingle — enjoy the rest of the evening."

The re-entry is just as important. After leaving one conversation, you can approach someone new, rejoin a group, or circle back to someone you spoke to earlier. "I wanted to come back and hear the rest of that story" is a brilliant way to re-engage someone and signals that you found them genuinely interesting.

Why Dinners Make All of This Easier

Social events vary enormously in how easy they make it to connect with strangers. A loud bar with 200 people and no structure is one of the hardest environments. A dinner table with eight people and a shared meal is one of the easiest.

At a dinner, the logistics do half the work for you. You're seated next to specific people, which eliminates the anxiety of who to approach. There's food arriving, which provides natural conversation points. The group is small enough that everyone gets included. And the evening has a natural arc — starters, mains, desserts — that gives the conversation time to develop from polite introductions into something real.

This is exactly why we designed Dinners With Friends the way we did. Every event is structured around a table, a meal, and a group of people who are all there for the same reason: to meet someone new. There's no pressure to work the room. No need to find the other person standing alone. The table does the connecting for you.

If you're someone who wants to be more social but finds large, unstructured events overwhelming, a dinner is a far gentler starting point. And the skills you build at a dinner table — asking good questions, listening actively, being warm and present — transfer to every other social situation in your life. Being a better friend starts with practising these small, consistent habits.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Making Friends

Nobody talks about this enough, so let's be direct: making friends as an adult requires doing things that feel uncomfortable. Walking into a room where you don't know anyone is uncomfortable. Starting a conversation with a stranger is uncomfortable. Being vulnerable enough to say "I'd love to stay in touch" is uncomfortable.

But discomfort and danger are not the same thing. The worst thing that happens when you approach a stranger at an event is that the conversation doesn't click and you move on. That's it. No lasting damage. No permanent consequence. Just a slightly awkward ninety seconds that both of you will have forgotten by tomorrow.

The best thing that happens is that you meet someone interesting, exchange numbers, and have a new friend. And new friends, as the research consistently shows, are one of the most powerful predictors of happiness, health, and longevity we have.

The gap between a lonely evening at home and a room full of potential friends is exactly one decision wide. You just have to walk through the door.