27 Large Group Activities for Adults (Hosted & DIY)

Most team building advice quietly assumes a group of twelve. Then someone hands you a roster of 60 names, or an all-hands agenda with 200 people in the room, and half of that advice stops working. The circle is too big to hear each other, the icebreaker that took eight minutes with one team takes forty, and a third of the room quietly checks out.

Large groups are not small groups with more chairs. They need different mechanics: parallel play instead of taking turns, teams instead of individuals, and a host or emcee who can hold a room.

We run these events for a living. teambuilding.com has hosted 45,000+ team building events across virtual and in-person formats since 2013 (as of September 2026), and our catalog now includes 190+ hosted Originals — 90+ of them in-person formats built to run in ballrooms, parks, breakout rooms, and conference halls. We have hosted events for teams at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Cisco, and dozens of other organizations that book us 15 or more times each.

This guide covers both sides of the problem: the hosted events you can book when you do not want to run a 200-person activity yourself, and the free activities our hosts use that genuinely scale. This list includes:

1. What are large group activities?
2. The best large group activities for adults you can book
3. Where to book large group activities
4. Free large group activities that work with any crowd
5. Large group party games for adults
6. Indoor large group activities
7. Outdoor large group activities and group outings
8. Large group team building activities for work and conferences
9. What we've learned from hosting large group events
10. Large group activities we don't recommend

Let's get into it.

What are large group activities?

Large group activities are games, challenges, and events designed to keep everyone participating when the group is too big for a single conversation, usually 25 people or more. Examples include Rock Paper Scissors tournaments, team trivia nights, field days, cook-offs, and hosted game shows. The defining constraint is participation: a good large group activity gives every person something to do in the same minute, rather than making 40 people watch while two take a turn. These activities are also called "big group activities," "activities for large groups," "group activities for adults," and "large group team building activities."

Large group activities are what team building activities become once you scale them up, and they are the practical half of team building for large groups. They are similar to large group games, large group icebreakers, and fun group activities, and they are the backbone of most company offsites, all-hands days, and annual conferences.

How big is "large"? Across 23,000+ confirmed bookings on our platform, the median team building event has 16 participants, and half of all events land between 10 and 27 people. Our host team's working rule is that about 15 people is the dividing line: below it, an event can run personal and high-touch with many short rounds, and above it you need structured hosting, breakout teams, polls, and fewer but longer rounds so that everyone actually gets to play.

The good news is that bigger groups are not a compromise. A meta-analysis in Small Group Research by Klein, DiazGranados, Salas and colleagues, covering 60 effect sizes, found that team building has a moderate positive effect on team outcomes overall (r = .31), with the strongest results on affective and process outcomes (r = .44 each) — and larger teams benefited most (r = .66). Worth noting: the same analysis did not find a significant direct effect on team performance, so the gains flow through how people feel and how they work together, not through a straight line to output.

The best large group activities for adults you can book

Calling any single activity "the best" is mostly opinion, so we ground the ranking in data. Our Team Building Score combines overall satisfaction, participant recommendation scores, organizer reviews, engagement ratings, and other post-event feedback from more than 50,000 post-event surveys, and we publish exactly how it is calculated.

The events below all scale well past 30 participants, and the list includes both in-person and virtual formats, because plenty of "large group" now means three offices on a video call.

Want the full catalog? Browse every event built for large groups →

Two of these come up constantly when planners have a big headcount and a real venue.

Field Day

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Field Day

An updated take on the childhood classic that gets your team to enjoy friendly outdoor competition. 

In-Person90 min$80 pp 5.0(56)

Field Day is our outdoor competition format, and it is the rare hosted event with a high minimum rather than a low one: it starts at 32 participants and runs up to 1,000. A facilitator brings the equipment to your park, field, or campus lawn and runs 90 minutes of relay races, tug-of-war style challenges, and playground classics with a scoreboard attached. Teams rotate through stations, so 200 people are never waiting in one line.

It is the closest thing we offer to a company-wide field day, with the planning, gear, and refereeing handled for you.

Museum Hack Scavenger Hunt at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Museum Hack Scavenger Hunt at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Experience NYC's The Met in a fresh and unexpected way.

In-Person120 min$100 pp 5.0(750)

The Museum Hack Scavenger Hunt splits a group into small teams that race through the Met solving clues, hunting down specific artworks, and staging photo challenges, with a host who knows which stories actually land. Museums are one of the best venues for a large group because the building does the crowd management for you: teams spread across galleries, then reconvene for scoring.

Where to book large group activities

There are a lot of companies selling group activities, and a lot of them are really one venue with a sales page. For a large group, the questions that matter are narrow: can they staff enough hosts, can they run parallel teams, and have they done your headcount before? Here are the providers we would actually consider, including our own.

Company	Type	Typical price	Best for	Our take
teambuilding.com	Team building company	$25–$100 per person, in-person; $20–$45 virtual	Hosted events for 30 to 1,000+ people, in person or online	Our pick, and we are obviously biased. Our Originals are refined against post-event surveys, most hosts are employees rather than subcontractors, and formats like Field Day and Conference Energizers are designed for high headcounts rather than stretched to fit them.
Confetti	Experiences marketplace	~$20–$50 per person, priced live on their site	Teams that want a wide selection and instant pricing	The strongest marketplace alternative, with a broad catalog of games, classes, and workshops. Leans virtual and leans short — think energizer rather than a full offsite centerpiece.
TeamBonding	Team building company	Custom quotes	Large corporate programs with charity or CSR components	Decades in the industry and a deep catalog of in-person programs, including build-a-bike style charity events that work well at conference scale.
The Go Game (Weve)	Team building company	Custom quotes	Highly produced, game-show-style events with an emcee	Strong production values for big rooms and stages. Limited public review volume, but consistently well rated.
Outback Team Building	Team building company	Custom quotes	Traveling facilitators for multi-city or roadshow events	A broad North American footprint and a catalog of classic formats like charity bike builds and city scavenger hunts.

Booking a host is the fastest route for a big group, but it is not the only one. Everything below is free or close to it, and every activity here comes out of formats our hosts run.

Free large group activities that work with any crowd

These 27 activities are organized by setting: crowd-proof basics first, then party games, indoor options, outdoor outings, and formats built for work events. Every one of them has been chosen because it scales — no taking turns around a circle of 80.

Activity	Best for	Group size	Time	Cost
Rock Paper Scissors Tournament	Instant energy	20–500+	10 min	Free
Bet on the Crowd	Getting to know the room	20–200	15–30 min	Free
Lightning Scavenger Hunts	Waking up a flat room	15–300	10–20 min	Free
Human Bingo	Mixing departments	20–150	20–30 min	Free (printing)
Would You Rather, Live	Participation with zero prep	25–1,000+	5–15 min	Free
Speed Mixer Rounds	New hires and cross-team intros	20–120	20–40 min	Free
Family Feud	Big-room entertainment	30–300	30–45 min	Free
Trivia Night: Team vs Team	Tables of mixed teams	20–200	45–60 min	Free
Fishbowl	Laughter with almost no prep	15–60	20–30 min	Free
Name That Tune	Party energy	20–200	20–30 min	Free (speaker)
Minute to Win It Stations	Rotating crowds	20–150	30–60 min	$20–$50 supplies
Escape Room Stations	Problem solving indoors	20–100	45–60 min	$30–$75 supplies
Board Game Tournament	Low-key socializing	16–80	60–90 min	Free if you borrow games
Perfect Square	Communication under pressure	16–100	20–30 min	Rope and blindfolds
Egg Drop Challenge	Creative problem solving	16–120	30–45 min	$20–$40 supplies
Drawing Telephone	Guaranteed laughs	12–100	20–30 min	Paper and pens
Office Olympics	Whole-company competition	30–300	2–3 hours	$50–$200 gear
Company Picnic or Barbecue	Big headcounts and families	30–500	3–4 hours	Catering budget
Photo Scavenger Hunt	Exploring a new city	20–200	60–90 min	Free
Bowling Party	Mixed ages and abilities	20–120	2 hours	$20–$35 per person
Paintball or Laser Tag	Competitive crowds	20–100	2–3 hours	$25–$50 per person
Group Hike or Park Day	Low-cost offsites	15–100	Half day	Free
Conference Energizers	Breaking up long agendas	50–1,000+	5–10 min each	Free
Team Cook-Off	Offsites and celebrations	20–150	60–90 min	Ingredients
Charity Build Challenge	Purpose-driven groups	25–500	60–90 min	Materials budget
Team Awards Ceremony	Closing an offsite	20–300	20–30 min	Printing
Human Mosaic Photo	Groups of 100 or more	100–1,000+	15–20 min	Free

1. Rock Paper Scissors Tournament

This is the single most reliable way we know to get a big room loud in under ten minutes, and it needs nothing but people.

To play:

• Everyone finds a partner and plays one round of rock paper scissors, best of three.
• The loser does not sit down. They become the winner's cheering section and follow them for the rest of the game, chanting their name.
• Winners find new winners and play again, dragging their growing entourage behind them.
• Keep going until two finalists face off, each backed by half the room.

The last match is the point. With 200 people, the two finalists are playing in front of 198 screaming fans, which is far more fun than the game deserves to be.

Best for: Kicking off an all-hands or breaking up a long agenda
Time: 10 minutes
Materials (cost): None (free)

What we've learned: Say the cheering rule twice before you start, and demonstrate it with one volunteer. Groups that skip the demo end up with half the room sitting down after their first loss, and the whole mechanic collapses.

2. Bet on the Crowd

Bet on the Crowd is part trivia, part social experiment, and it is one of our favorite formats for a group that does not know each other well. Instead of testing obscure facts, players predict what their colleagues said.

To play:

• Before the event, survey everyone with quick either/or questions: dogs or cats, coffee or tea, early bird or night owl, beach or mountains.
• Keep the results secret and tally the percentages.
• At the event, split the room into teams and ask, "Which way did this group vote?"
• Teams write down their guess, then you reveal the split. Closest team wins the round.

Best for: Groups that mix departments or offices
Time: 15 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): A free survey tool and a way to show results (free)

What we've learned: Close votes are the fun ones. A 52/48 split creates genuine argument at every table; a 95/5 split gets a shrug. When you write the survey, aim for questions your group will actually be divided on, and throw in two or three that reveal something specific about your company.

3. Lightning Scavenger Hunts

A scavenger hunt does not need a venue or a map. In our events, the fastest version is a single clue at a time, with everyone racing at once.

To play:

• The host calls out a clue: something older than you are, the weirdest thing in your bag, something that starts with the same letter as your first name.
• Everyone scatters to find it — desks, bags, kitchen, car, conference room.
• First person back with a qualifying item scores a point, or the room votes on the funniest find.
• Run five to eight clues and keep a running scoreboard by team.

Need clues? Our generator writes them for you:

Best for: Reviving a room after lunch or a long session
Time: 10 to 20 minutes
Materials (cost): None (free)

What we've learned: Do not rush to the next clue. When someone comes back holding a hundred-year-old pocket watch or a souvenir from a strange trip, stop and ask about it. The race generates the energy, but the stories are what people remember.

4. Human Bingo

Human Bingo turns a room full of strangers into a scavenger hunt where the prizes are people. It is the most efficient mixer we know for groups of 50 or more.

To play:

• Create bingo cards where each square is a statement: has lived abroad, plays an instrument, has run a marathon, speaks three languages, has met someone famous.
• Hand one card to each person as they walk in.
• Participants circulate and find someone who matches each square, writing that person's name in the box. One name per card, so nobody can fill a row with their own team.
• First person to complete a line, then a full card, wins.

Best for: Conference openers, onboarding cohorts, merged teams
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Printed cards and pens (free to a few dollars)

What we've learned: The squares are the whole game. Prompts everyone can already answer about each other produce a fast, boring card. Write squares that require a real conversation, and the room will still be talking about them at dinner.

5. Would You Rather, Live

This one works at literally any size, including a thousand people in an auditorium, because voting is physical instead of verbal.

To play:

• Name the two sides of the room, or simply "stand up" versus "stay seated."
• Read a would-you-rather question and have people move to the side that matches their answer.
• Once the room has split, hand a mic to one or two people on each side and ask them to defend the choice in ten seconds.
• Run six to ten rounds, escalating from silly to slightly revealing.

Pull prompts from our generator so you are not writing them at midnight:

Best for: Auditoriums, ballrooms, and any room where people cannot all hear each other
Time: 5 to 15 minutes
Materials (cost): A microphone (free)

What we've learned: The movement matters more than the questions. Standing up resets attention in a way that a show of hands never does, which is why we use this format between longer sessions rather than at the very start.

6. Speed Mixer Rounds

Speed networking, done well, is the highest-yield thing you can do with a big group of people who do not know each other. The trick is structure: short rounds, a prompt for each one, and a hard stop.

To run it:

• Arrange two long rows of chairs facing each other, or use standing pairs if the room is tight.
• Give every pair the same prompt and three minutes — not "introduce yourself," but something specific like "what is a project you are weirdly proud of?"
• Ring a bell. One row shifts a seat to the left. New pair, new prompt.
• Run six to eight rounds, then leave ten minutes of unstructured time at the end so the good conversations can continue.

Our list of icebreaker questions has enough prompts for a dozen rounds.

Best for: Onboarding groups, conferences, newly merged teams
Time: 20 to 40 minutes
Materials (cost): Chairs and a timer (free)

What we've learned: Three minutes feels aggressive and is exactly right. People stay energized when the round ends while the conversation is still good, and the unstructured block at the end is where the real connections get made.

Large group party games for adults

These are the games we reach for at holiday parties, celebration dinners, and any event where the group has already had a drink and nobody wants to hear the word "exercise."

7. Family Feud

The survey-says format is the best big-room game ever invented, because the audience plays along whether they are on stage or not.

To play:

• Survey the company in advance with open-ended questions: name something people always steal from the office kitchen, name a terrible reason to be late to a meeting.
• Tally the top five or six answers per question and build a simple slide for each.
• Split the room into two teams, and send one representative from each to a "buzzer" at the front for the face-off.
• Award points for answers on the board, subtract strikes for misses, and let teams shout suggestions from their seats.

Best for: Holiday parties and all-hands entertainment
Time: 30 to 45 minutes
Materials (cost): A survey tool, slides, and something to use as a buzzer (free)

What we've learned: Use company-specific questions for at least half the board. Generic survey questions play fine; questions about your own office get the biggest reaction, because the top answer is always someone everyone recognizes.

8. Trivia Night: Team vs Team

Trivia is the default large group activity for a reason. It scales by adding tables rather than adding time, and a room of 200 takes exactly as long as a room of 20.

To run it:

• Seat people in teams of six to eight and have each table pick a name — our team name generator list is good for this.
• Build four rounds of eight questions each with different themes, and mix difficulty so every table scores something.
• Collect answer sheets at the end of each round and swap them between tables for scoring.
• Read the leaderboard between rounds to keep the competition visible.

Our generator will fill a round in seconds:

For more question sets, see our list of trivia questions.

Best for: Dinners, offsites, and anywhere with tables
Time: 45 to 60 minutes
Materials (cost): Answer sheets and pens (free)

What we've learned: Put one round in the middle that has nothing to do with knowledge — a music round, a logo round, a "guess the baby photo" round. It resets the energy and gives the tables that are losing on facts a chance to climb back in.

9. Fishbowl

Fishbowl is three games in one, played with the same slips of paper, and it gets funnier with each round because everyone already knows the answers.

To play:

• Everyone writes three names or nouns on separate slips and drops them in a bowl.
• Round one: teammates describe the slip with words, no gestures, 60 seconds per turn. Guessed slips come out of the bowl.
• Round two: refill the bowl with the same slips, and describe using only one word each.
• Round three: refill again, and act it out silently.

For groups above 30, split into several fishbowls running in parallel and compare scores at the end. If your crowd loves this one, our improv games are the natural next step.

Best for: Rooms with tables and a bit of noise tolerance
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Paper, pens, a bowl (free)

10. Name That Tune

A music round played across the whole room is the cheapest crowd-pleaser on this list.

To play:

• Build a playlist of 20 to 30 songs across decades and genres, and cue each one to its most recognizable five seconds.
• Play a clip, then pause. Tables write down the song and artist.
• Award one point for the title and one for the artist, with a bonus for the year.
• Finish with a round that is all songs from the year your company was founded.

Best for: Parties, mixed-age groups, anyone tired of trivia
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): A speaker and a playlist (free)

What we've learned: Spread the decades deliberately. A playlist that skews to one era quietly tells a chunk of the room that this game is not for them, and you will see it in the scores.

11. Minute to Win It Stations

One-minute challenges are ideal for large groups because you can run eight of them at once. Instead of a single stage, build stations and rotate.

To run it:

• Set up six to ten stations, each with one 60-second challenge: stack cups into a pyramid, move cookies from forehead to mouth, bounce ping-pong balls into cups, unroll a roll of tape with one hand.
• Split the group into teams and assign each team a starting station.
• Teams get three attempts per station, record their best result, then rotate on a whistle.
• Total the scores across all stations for a team champion.

See our minute to win it games for challenge ideas that need almost no equipment.

Best for: Big rooms where you need parallel play
Time: 30 to 60 minutes
Materials (cost): Cups, ping-pong balls, tape, snacks ($20 to $50)

What we've learned: Assign one person per station as a permanent referee rather than rotating everyone. Consistent judging prevents the arguments that otherwise eat ten minutes at the scoring table.

Indoor large group activities

When the group is inside and the weather is not negotiable, you need activities that work in a conference room, a cafeteria, or a hotel ballroom. These five do. For smaller rooms, our indoor group games list has more options.

12. Escape Room Stations

Booking one escape room for 60 people does not work. Building your own does, because you can run every team at once.

To run it:

• Build four to six puzzle stations around a shared theme: a cipher, a jigsaw with a code on the back, a set of clues hidden in a stack of documents, a combination lock on a small box.
• Each solved puzzle produces a digit or letter for the final combination.
• Teams of six to eight work through the stations in any order, with a 45-minute clock on the screen.
• The first team to open the final box wins, and everyone else gets a debrief on what their team missed.

Best for: Problem-solving groups and offsite afternoons
Time: 45 to 60 minutes
Materials (cost): Locks, boxes, printed puzzles ($30 to $75)

What we've learned: Build one more puzzle than you think you need and make it optional. Fast teams finish early, get bored, and start helping other teams, which quietly ruins the ending for everyone.

13. Board Game Tournament

A tournament structure turns a pile of board games into an event with a winner, which is the difference between "people played games" and "people are still talking about it."

To run it:

• Choose four to six fast games that teach in two minutes and finish in fifteen.
• Set up multiple copies of each so tables run simultaneously.
• Teams play a round, score points for first through fourth place, then rotate to a new game.
• Total points across all rounds decide the champion.

Our list of team building board games has good picks that work at this pace.

Best for: Rainy-day offsites and quieter groups
Time: 60 to 90 minutes
Materials (cost): Borrowed games (free)

What we've learned: Ban the long games. One table playing a three-hour strategy game while everyone else rotates every fifteen minutes will hold the tournament hostage.

14. Perfect Square

Perfect Square is a communication exercise that becomes a spectator sport once you run several teams at once.

To play:

• Give each team of eight to twelve a long loop of rope and blindfolds for everyone.
• Blindfolded, each team must find the rope and shape it into a perfect square, then lay it on the ground and step back.
• No one may remove a blindfold until the team agrees they are finished.
• Reveal all the squares at the same time and compare.

With multiple teams, the comparison is the fun part: one square is nearly perfect, one is a triangle, and everyone has a theory about why. For more exercises in this vein, see our communication games.

Best for: Groups that need a reason to talk about how they communicate
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Rope and blindfolds per team (about $15 per team)

What we've learned: The debrief is where the value is. Ask each team who ended up leading and whether anyone appointed them. The answer is almost always "no," and that is the conversation worth having.

15. Egg Drop Challenge

The egg drop is a classic because the outcome is undeniable: the egg breaks or it does not, in front of everyone.

To play:

• Give each team an identical kit: straws, tape, paper, a few rubber bands, one plastic bag, and one raw egg.
• Teams get 20 minutes to build a contraption that protects the egg from a fall.
• Drop each entry from a balcony, a ladder, or a stairwell landing while everyone watches.
• Survivors advance to a higher drop until one design wins.

Best for: Engineering-minded groups and mixed-department teams
Time: 30 to 45 minutes
Materials (cost): Craft supplies and eggs ($20 to $40)

What we've learned: Run the elimination rounds rather than a single drop. Escalating heights keeps the whole room watching and turns a five-minute reveal into the highlight of the afternoon.

16. Drawing Telephone

Drawing Telephone is the paper version of a broken message, and it produces the loudest laughs of any activity on this list for the least preparation.

To play:

• Give everyone a stack of paper equal to the number of people at their table, six to eight is ideal.
• Everyone writes a sentence on the top sheet and passes the stack left.
• The next person reads it, flips to a blank sheet, and draws it. Pass again.
• The next person sees only the drawing and writes what they think it is. Alternate drawing and writing until the stacks return to their owners, then read the chains out loud.

Best for: Tables of any size, running in parallel
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Paper and pens (free)

What we've learned: Give people 45 seconds per turn, not 90. Tight timing produces worse drawings, and worse drawings are the entire point.

Outdoor large group activities and group outings

Outside is where big groups stop feeling crowded. These six work for anything from a 30-person team day to a 500-person company picnic. For more options, see our full list of outdoor team building activities.

17. Office Olympics

A full field day is the most reliable way to occupy a very large group outdoors, and the event structure does the work for you.

To run it:

• Pick six to eight events that mix athleticism with silliness: a relay race, tug-of-war, an egg-and-spoon course, a three-legged sprint, a water balloon toss.
• Divide everyone into teams of ten to fifteen with colors, names, and a captain.
• Run events in rotation so every team is playing at all times, with points for first through fourth.
• Close with a medal ceremony and a team photo.

Our office Olympics ideas list has more event formats. If you would rather not referee it yourself, our hosted Field Day runs the same structure with facilitators and equipment included.

Best for: Company-wide events with 30 to 300 people
Time: 2 to 3 hours
Materials (cost): Cones, balloons, batons, medals ($50 to $200)

What we've learned: Mix the teams across departments and seniority before anyone arrives. Teams that self-select rebuild the org chart on the field, and the day ends with the same people talking to each other that already talk every day.

18. Company Picnic or Barbecue

A picnic is the most forgiving format for a giant headcount, because people can arrive, eat, drift, and play at their own pace.

To plan one:

• Book a park shelter or a large lawn with shade, restrooms, and parking, and confirm the permit early.
• Cater or grill, and plan for dietary restrictions in advance rather than at the table.
• Set up three or four activity zones: lawn games, a photo corner, a kids' area if families are invited, and a shaded seating area for people who came to talk.
• Schedule one anchor moment in the middle — a tug-of-war, a raffle, a short thank-you from a leader — so the day has a peak.

See our company picnic ideas for games and logistics.

Best for: Annual events, family days, and summer celebrations
Time: 3 to 4 hours
Materials (cost): Catering and permits (varies)

What we've learned: Optional activity zones beat one mandatory schedule. At this size, roughly a third of the group wants to compete, a third wants to eat and talk, and a third is chasing a toddler. A single agenda serves exactly one of those groups.

19. Photo Scavenger Hunt

A photo hunt turns any neighborhood into a game board, which makes it ideal when a large group lands in an unfamiliar city for a conference.

To run it:

• Write 20 to 30 photo challenges: recreate a famous album cover, find the oldest building on the block, get a stranger to join your team photo, find something that matches your team color.
• Assign point values by difficulty and set a hard return time and meeting point.
• Teams of four to six head out and submit photos to a shared album or group chat.
• Review the best submissions on a screen when everyone returns and vote on winners.

Our scavenger hunt ideas list has more clue formats.

Best for: Conferences, offsites, and city-based teams
Time: 60 to 90 minutes
Materials (cost): Phones (free)

What we've learned: Score creativity, not speed. When the only prize is for finishing first, teams sprint past the interesting challenges, and the photo review at the end has nothing worth watching.

20. Bowling Party

Bowling is the rare outing that works across every age and fitness level, and most alleys can take a very large group if you book the whole venue.

To organize it:

• Reserve enough lanes for teams of five or six, and confirm shoe rental and food are included in the quote.
• Split into teams and run a simple points system across two games rather than one long tournament.
• Add side challenges for bonus points: bowl with your non-dominant hand, bowl granny-style, bowl a spare after a gutter ball.
• Award prizes for the lowest score as well as the highest so the whole room stays in it.

Best for: Mixed groups and evening events
Time: About 2 hours
Materials (cost): $20 to $35 per person

21. Paintball or Laser Tag

Competitive, physical, and genuinely memorable — with the caveat that this one has to be optional.

To organize it:

• Book a venue that can field your whole group across multiple arenas or fields at once.
• Split into balanced teams and run short objective-based rounds, like capture the flag, rather than long elimination matches.
• Rotate teams between rounds so nobody spends the afternoon losing to the same opponents.
• Plan a parallel activity for anyone sitting out, and make opting out socially easy.

Best for: Competitive teams with a mostly-willing crowd
Time: 2 to 3 hours
Materials (cost): $25 to $50 per person

What we've learned: Laser tag gets far higher participation than paintball for the same group. Paintball hurts, and the people who decline are disproportionately the ones who were already least likely to join a team event.

22. Group Hike or Park Day

A hike is the cheapest large group activity that still feels like a real outing, and conversation happens naturally because people fall into pairs on the trail.

To organize it:

• Pick a route with an easy option and a longer option that rejoin at the same endpoint.
• Assign a leader at the front and a sweeper at the back so nobody is left behind or rushed.
• Share the route, the weather, and a gear list in advance, and bring water, sunscreen, and a first aid kit.
• Finish somewhere with food and shade, which is where most of the actual bonding happens.

If your group is closer to the water than the mountains, our beach party ideas work the same way.

Best for: Budget offsites and outdoorsy teams
Time: Half a day
Materials (cost): Water and snacks (free to low)

What we've learned: Publish the difficulty honestly and offer the short route without ceremony. One unexpectedly steep mile is all it takes to turn a team day into an experience a few people quietly resent.

Large group team building activities for work and conferences

These are the formats we run most often for company meetings, conferences, and annual gatherings, where the group is large, the agenda is full, and the activity has to earn its slot. For ongoing programs rather than one-off events, see our employee engagement activities.

23. Conference Energizers

The most valuable large group activity at a conference is often five minutes long. After a 45-minute session, attention is gone, and the next speaker inherits a dead room.

To run them:

• Prepare six to eight standalone minigames that need no setup: a 60-second rock paper scissors bracket, a "find three people wearing your color" sprint, a rapid-fire quiz on the last session.
• Drop one between sessions, from the stage, with a two-sentence explanation.
• Keep each one under five minutes and end it while people still want more.
• Score them cumulatively across the day if you want a running competition.

We run this as a hosted format too: Conference Energizers starts at 30 participants and scales to a full ballroom.

Best for: Conferences, summits, and multi-hour all-hands meetings
Time: 5 to 10 minutes each
Materials (cost): A microphone (free)

What we've learned: Energizers work best immediately after the lowest-energy moment of the agenda, not at the start of the day. The room does not need waking up at 9 a.m.; it needs it at 2 p.m.

24. Team Cook-Off

A cook-off gives a large group a job, a deadline, and something to eat at the end, which is a hard combination to beat.

To run it:

• Pick one dish everyone makes their own version of: guacamole, salsa, chili, or a build-your-own sandwich.
• Set up identical ingredient stations for teams of five to eight, with a few "secret" extras to fight over.
• Give teams 20 minutes to cook and five minutes to name and present their creation.
• Judge on taste, presentation, and pitch, with a panel or an all-room vote.

Our hosted version, The Great Guac Off, runs the same structure with ingredients, aprons, and a facilitator brought to your venue.

Best for: Offsites, celebrations, and groups that need a reason to mix
Time: 60 to 90 minutes
Materials (cost): Ingredients and serving supplies (varies)

What we've learned: The presentation round matters more than the cooking. Making each team name their dish and pitch it in 60 seconds is what turns a food activity into a team activity.

25. Charity Build Challenge

Give-back activities scale unusually well, because the work is naturally parallel: 300 people can assemble 300 kits at the same time.

To run it:

• Pick a local partner first and ask what they actually need — care kits, school supplies, blankets, bikes — rather than guessing.
• Set up an assembly line with stations and a target number on a visible board.
• Add a team competition layer: quality checks, speed rounds, or a decorating contest for the finished items.
• Close by handing the donation over in person, or with a short message from the partner organization.

We run a hosted version, Paws for a Cause, where teams make blankets for animal rescues.

Best for: Conferences, annual meetings, and purpose-driven groups
Time: 60 to 90 minutes
Materials (cost): Donation materials (varies)

What we've learned: Name the recipient specifically. "We are making 400 blankets for a shelter in this city" lands very differently than "we are giving back," and the difference shows up in how hard people work.

26. Team Awards Ceremony

An awards ceremony is the best closing activity we know for a large group, because it makes the day's shared experiences official.

To run it:

• Collect nominations during the event itself, with categories that are specific and a little ridiculous: most creative wrong answer, most improved bowling form, best team name.
• Keep it to eight to twelve awards so it runs under half an hour.
• Print certificates or hand out cheap trophies — physical objects get kept and photographed.
• Close with one sincere award chosen by leadership, and keep it short.

For year-round versions of this, see our employee appreciation ideas.

Best for: The last 30 minutes of an offsite or company event
Time: 20 to 30 minutes
Materials (cost): Certificates or novelty trophies (low)

What we've learned: Reference moments from the day itself. Awards written in advance feel like a corporate script; awards written during lunch about something that happened that morning get the biggest reaction of the entire event.

27. Human Mosaic Photo

This one only works with a large group, which is exactly why it belongs here. The whole company arranges itself into a shape — a logo, a number, a word — and one photo from above becomes the artifact of the day.

To run it:

• Choose a shape simple enough to read from above and mark the outline on the ground with chalk, tape, or cones before anyone arrives.
• Hand out colored shirts, ponchos, or umbrellas by section so the shape has contrast.
• Position a photographer on a balcony, a roof, or a drone, and use a mic to direct people into place.
• Take the serious version, then one where everyone jumps.

Best for: Conferences, anniversaries, and company-wide gatherings of 100+
Time: 15 to 20 minutes
Materials (cost): Chalk or tape and colored items (low)

What we've learned: Mark the outline in advance and it takes ten minutes. Try to direct 300 people into a shape from scratch and it takes forty, and the photo is not better for the wait.

What we've learned from hosting large group events

We have run tens of thousands of events across both formats, and large groups fail and succeed in predictable ways. Here is what the data and our hosts agree on.

Big does not mean impersonal. The median virtual event on our platform is a team of 16, but we have hosted 448 virtual events with 100 or more participants, the largest with over 1,000 attendees. The intimacy people worry about losing at that size gets replaced by something else worth having: the energy of an entire company playing the same game at the same moment.

The host is the whole ballgame at scale. With twelve people, a group can self-organize. With 120, someone has to hold the room, explain the rules in two sentences, keep time, and make the quiet tables feel included. This is the single biggest difference between a large event people remember and one they endure.

Parallel beats sequential, always. The fastest way to lose a large group is an activity where people take turns. Anything that has every team playing simultaneously — stations, tables, breakouts, heats — will hold attention roughly as well at 200 people as it does at 20.

Schedule it like everyone else does, because it works. Across 22,000+ events on our platform, Thursday is the most popular day for team building (28% of events), and most events start between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. local time. In-person events peak on Tuesdays instead. Mid-afternoon works because it borrows from the least productive block of the day, and a Tuesday or Thursday avoids both the Monday scramble and the Friday exodus.

How group size changes what you should run

Group size	What changes	What to run
Under 15	Everyone can hear each other. Taking turns is still practical, and one conversation can include the whole room.	Discussion games, icebreaker games, short rounds, anything that rewards personal stories.
15 to 40	One conversation stops working. You need a host, and quiet people start disappearing.	Trivia, Drawing Telephone, Speed Mixer Rounds — teams of six to eight running in parallel.
40 to 100	Logistics become the constraint: sightlines, sound, and how long it takes to explain anything.	Minute to Win It Stations, Escape Room Stations, Family Feud, a hosted event with multiple facilitators.
100 to 300	You are producing a show, not running a game. Anything requiring individual attention is out.	Office Olympics, Would You Rather, Live, Charity Build Challenge, picnics.
300+	Every minute of instruction costs a person-week of attention. Simplicity wins outright.	Conference Energizers, Rock Paper Scissors Tournament, Human Mosaic Photo, staged game shows.

If your large group is spread across offices or time zones, the same principles apply on a video call — see our list of virtual group activities for formats built for that.

Large group activities we don't recommend

Some staples of team building get worse as the group grows, and a few of them we have watched fail in person. These are the ones to skip when the headcount is high.

The Lame List

Activity	Why skip it	Verdict
Round-robin introductions	Going around the room takes 40 minutes with 60 people, and nobody remembers anything past the fifth name. Use a mixer like Human Bingo instead.	Skip it
Trust falls	The exercise asks for physical trust between people who may not have met, carries a genuine injury risk at scale, and teaches nothing that a real collaborative challenge does not teach better.	Skip it
Human Knot	It is fine with eight people and unworkable with eighty. Big versions either take forever or split into small knots that finish at wildly different times.	Usually skip
Mandatory karaoke or talent shows	Putting employees on a stage in front of hundreds of colleagues creates anxiety rather than connection, especially when opting out is visible to everyone.	Skip it
One escape room for the whole company	Escape rooms cap at six to ten players. A group of 60 means most people wait in a lobby. Run Escape Room Stations instead so every team plays at once.	Doesn't scale
A motivational speaker billed as team building	A good speaker is worth booking, but the audience is passive and nobody interacts with anyone. It is entertainment, not team building.	Not team building
An open bar with no structure	Large unstructured mixers reliably fragment into the same cliques that already exist, and the people you most wanted to include leave first.	Add structure

Final thoughts

Large groups are not harder to entertain than small ones. They are just less forgiving. An activity with a slow setup, a single point of attention, or a turn-taking structure will expose itself immediately at 100 people, while the same activity might survive with twelve.

Pick formats that run in parallel, assign teams before people arrive, keep instructions to two sentences, and give the day one clear peak. That is most of the job.

If you would rather hand the whole thing to someone else, browse the events we host for large groups — every one of them has been run at high headcounts, repeatedly, with the scores to show for it.

Next, check out our lists of team building games, party games for work, and social activities for adults.