How to make friends in a new city: a 90-day plan for after the boxes are unpacked

To make friends in a new city, choose two recurring activities where the same people turn up every week, keep going back and look out for other newcomers, who are in the same boat. When you click with someone, suggest something outside the activity, like a coffee afterwards, and see them again soon.

That’s it, really. The hard part is the stretch between the week your boxes still say “KITCHEN??” and the night a stranger at trivia (let’s call him Graeme) says “oh, you again” and seems to mean it nicely.

Below: why turning up works (a man in a bag is involved), where to go and a 90-day plan you can set to your own moving date.

How to make friends in a new city: where to start

“Put yourself out there” is the classic advice on how to make friends after moving, and the least useful: out where, and on which night? The specific version: two recurring things on fixed nights, where the same people turn up every week.

A term of pottery, a social netball team, the quiz at your local: anything with regulars works. Two, because one can get rained out, and three starts to feel like a second job.

Predictable is the point. On who ends up friends with whom, the OpenStax psychology textbook is blunt: “This most important factor is proximity.” Seeing someone again and again also makes you like them more, which psychologists call the mere exposure effect.

Robert Zajonc opened his classic 1968 paper on it with a news story about a student who attended an Oregon State University class inside a big black bag, bare feet showing. One classmate tried to stick a “Kick Me” label on him, the university’s alumni magazine reports, but in the story Zajonc quotes, the class went from hostility to curiosity “and finally to friendship”.

It’s an anecdote, not an experiment, and nobody here is recommending the bag. Just the turning up.

Nobody becomes a regular on their first visit.

The experiments agree. In a classroom study summarised in the Noba psychology textbook, women who simply attended more classes were rated by the other students as more familiar, more similar and more attractive. Attendance has never had better PR.

The first weeks matter too, partly by luck. When 54 first-year students in Germany were given random seats at a one-off introductory session, those seated side by side, or even in the same row, rated their friendship as more intense a year later.

So friendship is partly a meat-tray raffle. You can’t fix the draw, but you can keep entering it: pick your row and keep sitting in it.

Then find the other new people: psychologist Marisa G. Franco suggests seeking out fellow “transitioners”, who she says are particularly open to spending time with new friends and have more time to connect. They’re not hard to spot: they’re the ones asking the organiser which door to use.

(If you’re wondering why this all happened by itself at school, see why it’s so hard to make friends as an adult.)

How long does it take to make friends in a new city?

Usually a few months, depending on how often you see the same people, because friendship is built from hours together, not time in town. Research by Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas found it takes roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 to become friends and more than 200 to become close friends.

Both of Hall’s samples were recent movers, like you. More than 200 hours is a lot of trivia nights, which is why this plan leans on seeing the same people every week. (More on what counts in how many hours it takes to make a friend.)

So friendships that take off tend to take off quickly. It rarely feels like a decision: one week you’re nodding hello at pottery, and soon you’re getting lunch on Saturdays and neither of you can remember who suggested it.

When someone clicks, be the one who suggests it. The class will teach you to centre clay, but lunch isn’t on the syllabus. Try a coffee after, or a drink somewhere else, within a few weeks.

Where to meet people in a new city

The best places to meet people in a new city are the ones that repeat: weekly classes, social sport, volunteering, clubs and anything with regulars. One-off events are fine for scouting, but friendship needs a second meeting, a third and ideally a group chat with a silly name.

• Classes that run for a term. Pottery, a language, choir. Franco’s example newcomer joined a drawing class, which comes with a built-in topic of conversation (usually whatever you drew last week).
• parkrun. A free 5k every Saturday morning where you can walk, jog, run, volunteer or spectate, at hundreds of events around Australia. Its promise that “no one finishes last” may be the kindest line in Australian sport, and some events, like Main Beach parkrun on the Gold Coast, head for coffee afterwards.
• Social sport and clubs. A Tuesday netball or futsal team, a climbing gym, a community garden. A fixture list is a recurring thing someone else has already organised.
• Volunteering. A job to do takes the pressure off small talk. The ABC reported on Brisbane’s Rubbish Club, whose members met at a café before picking up litter around the Gallery of Modern Art.
• The new-starter crew at work. The people who started the same month as you are new too, and equally unsure whether the cake in the tearoom is for them. Hall found that hours spent working together “just don’t count as much”, so take it to lunch or a Friday drink.

Small talk counts too. People asked to smile, make eye contact and chat briefly with the barista came away happier, and feeling more like they belonged, than people asked to be “as efficient as possible”.

Week three: you know the barista’s name. The barista is still working on yours.

Friend-making apps are another route. Bumble For Friends pitches itself at people who “moved to a new city”, and Timeleft sets up dinners with “five new faces” in cities including Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney.

Check what each one costs first (Timeleft diners, for one, pay for their own food and drinks at the venue). We found no independent research on whether these apps beat a club, so use them to find something recurring. Five new faces make a lovely dinner, but a friend is usually the same face, five weeks running.

Howdy Mate! comes in once the introductions are done, when “we should do this again” needs someone to pick an actual Thursday.

How to make friends in a new town

In a new town, there are fewer options but more repeats: the same faces at the pub quiz, the footy club and the bakery queue. Pick the thing half the town already goes to and become one of its regulars. You’ll be “the new one” for a while, which at least gives everyone something to ask you about.

How to make friends in a new country

You’re far from alone: almost 1.3 million people counted in Australia’s 2021 Census had lived overseas five years earlier. Expat and newcomer groups make a good first landing spot, full of people who have also recently stood in a supermarket unable to find the tinned tomatoes.

Franco also suggests being open to “locationships”, which she describes as “friendships sustained simply because you’re in the same place at the same time”. They count. Then add one thing that’s mostly locals, so your circle isn’t only people who might move on next year.

Making friends in a new city in Australia

Friend-making events have been “popping up all around the country”, the ABC reported in June 2026, from a $35 game night in Brisbane to that Rubbish Club. Brisbane was also the only Australian city in Time Out’s 2025 top 20 friendliest cities, with 54% of locals describing their city as welcoming and friendly. It’s a media poll rather than a study, but well done, Brisbane.

Your first 90 days in a new city: a week-by-week plan

Enter the day you arrived and each step below shows its real date, so you know exactly which Thursday is six weeks in.

The step most people skip is the invite, because it’s the one part of the plan with no quiz sheet to hide behind. Our guide on how to ask a friend to hang out has the exact words.

Keeping your friends back home while you start over

A move changes two friendship lists at once. The new one needs hours. The old one only needs a little regular contact to stay warm, but it does need it.

So give friends back home a gentler rhythm, say monthly, at a time that doesn’t clash with your two recurring things. One evening on the phone to home is lovely. Every evening on the phone to home is how week six arrives with nobody at trivia knowing your name.

And tell them about Graeme. Friends back home want the new names too, and it’s easier to stay close to someone who knows who everyone in your stories is.

For the rest (time zones, visits and rituals), see our guide to long-distance friendship, and for one system that covers everyone, how to stay in touch with friends.

Feeling lonely after moving to a new city

Feeling lonely after a move is understandable, and it isn’t a sign that anything is wrong with you. A move takes away, all at once, the everyday contact that friendships run on, and building it again takes time.

You’re also far from the only one. In the year before the 2021 Census, 14.3% of Australians changed address, about one in seven, and the median age of people who moved between 2016 and 2021 was 33.

The people around you are probably more open than they seem, too. In experiments with commuters on trains and buses, people asked to chat with a stranger had a more positive trip than those who kept to themselves, yet others predicted the opposite, partly by underestimating how interested strangers would be.

If the loneliness feels heavy, or isn’t easing after a few months, please talk to someone: your GP or, in Australia, Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, both open 24/7. In the US, call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988. For more support, see whether it’s normal to have no friends as an adult.

The short version

• Pick two recurring things and keep going back. Same people, same night, every week.
• Find the other newcomers. They’re often looking too.
• Invite early. When someone clicks, suggest something outside the activity within a few weeks.
• Expect months, not weeks. Roughly 50 hours to a casual friend, and more than 200 to a close one.
• Keep home on a gentler rhythm. Monthly or so, at a time that doesn’t clash.

It will feel slow, then sudden: for weeks you know nobody, and then one Thursday you’re saving someone a seat. Keep turning up (the bag is optional). Somewhere in that same row is a friend you haven’t met yet.