Paris guide · 14 August 2026
How to make friends in Paris
Search for how to make friends in Paris?
We run social events in Paris in English, so we have a stake in this. We have also watched a lot of people do it, and the patterns are clearer than the advice you find online.
The number that changes what you go looking for
The other question that follows this one around is the 11-3-6 rule. The claim: roughly 11 meetings, of about three hours each, within six months, to turn someone you have met into someone you would call a friend. It came out of a 2022 survey of 2,000 adults, commissioned by a cough sweet company and analysed by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar. So it is a rule of thumb with a marketing budget behind it, not a law of nature. Hold it loosely.
The shape of it is still right, and it explains why so much of the standard advice quietly fails. Eleven meetings is not something you collect from eleven different events. You get it from one thing you keep going back to.
Which means the useful question is not "where do I meet people in Paris". It is closer to: what happens again next month, with some of the same faces in the room, and will I want to be there?
Asked that way, most of the options below sort themselves out quickly.
What actually exists here
There is more of this in Paris than most people find in their first month. The honest problem is that the options are not interchangeable, and the ones with the biggest numbers are often the worst fit for what you are actually trying to do.
| What it is | Worth it if | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Language exchange nights (Polyglot Club, Mundo Lingo) | You want free, weekly, and a fixed bar you can just turn up to | Big and loud. The conversation resets with new people most weeks, which is the opposite of eleven meetings |
| The large international Meetup groups | You want volume and near-zero commitment. Some have tens of thousands of members | Scale is the problem. A different room every time, and regulars on Reddit describe the biggest mixers as superficial or already closed off |
| Dinner with strangers (Timeleft and similar) | You like a small table and a set format, and you want the whole thing handled for you | One table, one evening. It can be a great night that comes with nothing bringing those same people back |
| Established expat organisations (InterNations and the older clubs) | You want structure, events that definitely happen, and a professional crowd | Skews corporate and older, and most run on an annual membership |
| Phone-free socials (The Offline Club) | The idea of a room where nobody is on their phone appeals to you | The restriction is the format. That is the point, and it is also the whole of it |
| Activity clubs, us included | You would rather do something than stand around introducing yourself | Only works if the calendar is real. Check that the thing runs again |
The pattern worth noticing: the free weekly ones are the easiest to try and the hardest to build anything on, because the room changes. The structured ones hold their shape but ask for money and often for a suit.
Check the date on everything you read
This is the part that costs people the most time. A lot of the Paris advice ranking on Google describes a city that no longer exists.
Franglish, the paid French-English exchange that half the older guides recommend, has effectively collapsed. Its domain serves an unrelated travel blog now, and leftover Meetup groups still trade on the name. Search for it today and Google mostly returns tour dates for a French rapper.
The TripAdvisor thread on meeting people in Paris, which still ranks, points you at Jim Haynes' Sunday dinners. Haynes died in 2021 and the dinners went with him. Guides refreshed this year still list them.
So before you plan an evening around something you read: find the group's actual calendar, and check something happened on it in the last month.
What we run
Hold My Club is eight formats, all in English, built on the idea that doing something together is easier than being introduced. You come for the activity and the format does the socialising for you.
- Board game nights: tables of four to six, reshuffled between rounds, every rule explained from zero.
- Quiz nights: Family Feud style, so you are guessing the most popular answer rather than the correct one. Teams are made at the door and mixed partway through. Knowing trivia barely helps.
- Painting and drawing parties: you paint your own canvas, then the canvases start moving and everyone adds to each other's. Materials provided, beginners are the norm.
- Photo walks: a corner of Paris you probably have not seen, a theme to shoot, walking partners that rotate, and a terrace at the end. Your phone is a fine camera for this.
- Volleyball: short friendly rounds in a park, teams shuffled between games. We bring the ball and the net. If you want the wider picture on playing here.
- Language exchange: one-on-one rounds with rotating partners, then a Story Slam where you retell your best story of the night in the other language. Beginners do well, because your partner needs you as much as you need them.
- Picnics: a stretch of park where every blanket has a different thing on it. You drift.
- AI builders nights: short talks, then fast one-on-ones about what people are building and where they are stuck. You do not need to be technical.
Coming alone is normal and most people do. You are usually doing something alongside someone within the first few minutes, which spares everybody the part where you stand at the edge of a room holding a drink.
One honest note: we do not run every format every week. Look at what's coming up and go by what is actually on the calendar rather than by what we have run before.
Questions people ask
How do people actually meet in Paris?
Through work, through friends of friends, and through activities that repeat. For anyone who arrived recently, the third one is the only lever you fully control. That is the whole reason the activity clubs and language exchanges exist.
Where do expats meet in Paris?
Language exchange nights, the big international Meetup groups, the established expat organisations, and increasingly the smaller activity clubs. Neighbourhood matters less than you would expect. People cross the city for a thing they like.
Do I need to speak French?
Not to start. A large part of this scene runs in English, including everything we do. You will want French eventually, and a language exchange is a decent way in, but it is not the entry fee for having a social life here.
Is dating in Paris hard?
Different question, different rooms, and not one we are any use on. Worth saying plainly, because the two searches sit right next to each other: an activity night is not a dating event, and treating it like one is the fastest way to be remembered badly.
How long does this take?
Longer than you want. Most people we see go from a first event to an actual group of friends over a few months of turning up, which lines up with the eleven meetings idea. The ones who get there fastest are not the most outgoing. They are the ones who picked something and came back
Hold My Club runs social events around hobbies in Paris, in English. See all our activities or browse what's coming up.