How to Make Friends in a New Country: What Works

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Learning how to make friends in a new country is the task that decides whether a move sticks. The research on people who move abroad is blunt about it: contact with locals is the strongest single predictor of adjusting well, and loneliness is the most common reason people give up and go home. The good news is that friendship is less a matter of luck than of hours, and once you know how the hours work, you can build a circle on purpose instead of waiting for one to appear.

The number that explains your loneliness

If you have been somewhere two months and still feel friendless, you are not failing. You have not yet logged the hours. The psychologist Jeffrey Hall studied people who had recently relocated and first-year students building friendships from scratch, and found that closeness runs on time spent together more than anything else. His rough thresholds:

About 50 hours together moves someone from acquaintance to casual friend.
Around 90 hours turns a casual friend into a friend.
More than 200 hours is what a close friendship takes.

Two details from his work matter for a move. Time spent on shared leisure, joking, hanging out, doing things, counts; time spent only working alongside someone counts for far less. And the hours have to accumulate with the same people, which is why a new city full of one-off encounters can leave you exhausted and still alone. The figure is not a target to tick off, but it reframes the problem honestly: you are not unlikeable, you are early.

Why repeated contact beats big events

The instinct in a new place is to chase events: a different meetup every week, a packed calendar of one-time gatherings. It feels productive and rarely produces a friend, because friendship needs the same faces again and again, not a parade of new ones. Decades of social research point to a simple driver: people befriend those they encounter repeatedly and unplanned, the colleague two desks over, the regular at the same class. Repetition does two things a big event cannot. It banks the hours with one person instead of scattering them, and it removes the pressure, because the next meeting is already built in and nobody has to make a bold move.

The practical rule that follows: choose a few recurring fixtures over a stream of novelties. One weekly class where you see the same dozen people beats five different events with sixty strangers, every time.

Where the hours add up fastest

Pick activities built on repetition and a shared focus, so the talking happens around something and the same group returns each week.

A weekly class or course. Language, cooking, pottery, dance, anything with a fixed roster and a term-long run. The shared learning gives you something to talk about and a reason to return.
A team or sports club. Amateur leagues, running clubs and climbing gyms manufacture repeated contact and a built-in shared goal.
Volunteering. A regular slot with the same organisation puts you alongside locals around a shared purpose, which bonds quickly.
A place of worship or community group, if it fits you, offers one of the densest ready-made networks anywhere.
A coworking space or a regular cafe. Working from the same place daily turns strangers into nodding acquaintances and then into lunch.
Hobby and interest groups that meet on a schedule, from choirs to board-game nights, where the shared passion does the introductions for you.

Notice the common thread: a fixed schedule and a returning group. A one-off workshop is a nice afternoon. A weekly one is a friendship engine.

Local friends or the expat bubble

Newcomers gravitate to other foreigners, and there is nothing wrong with that. Fellow expats understand the disorientation, share your reference points and give you somewhere to exhale. The trap is making them your entire world, because a circle of only other outsiders keeps the country at arm’s length and slows everything down.

The adjustment research is consistent here: time spent with host-country locals is what speeds up your ability to function and feel at home, and it is the buffer that does most to soften culture shock and homesickness. Aim for a mix. Lean on expat friends for comfort, and put deliberate effort into local ones, who open the language, the customs and the sense that you actually live here rather than visit.

Friendship works differently across cultures

A frustration almost every newcomer hits: the locals seem friendly, yet months pass and none of it turns into friendship. Usually the problem is a mismatch in how friendship itself works, not a personal rejection. Cultures run on different friendship models, and reading yours onto theirs leads to wrong conclusions.

Peach and coconut cultures. Some societies are soft on the outside, warm and chatty with strangers, but the friendly surface does not mean the inner circle is open, so easy small talk stalls before real friendship. Others are hard on the outside, reserved and slow to warm, then deeply loyal once you are in. Mistaking the first for closeness, or the second for coldness, sends people home feeling unwanted.
Pace and depth vary. In places where people keep the same friends from childhood, adult friendship forms slowly and runs deep, and a newcomer has to earn a way in over time. In more mobile societies, friendships form fast and lightly but can stay at the surface.
Read the local script. Watch how locals befriend each other, how invitations work, how directly people make plans, and follow that pattern rather than your home one. What reads as warmth or rudeness is often just a different friendship grammar.

The fix is patience and calibration. Adjust your expectations to the local rhythm, and judge progress by their signals, not the ones you grew up with.

Turning acquaintances into friends

Most people stall at the acquaintance stage because they wait to be adopted. In a new country nobody will do the work for you, so you have to be the one who initiates, and then escalate gently.

Be the organiser. Suggest the coffee, propose the walk, start the group chat. New arrivals who make plans build circles faster than those who wait for an invitation that locals, busy with settled lives, rarely think to send.
Move from the activity to everyday talk. A shared class gets you talking about the class. Friendship grows when the talk drifts to your actual lives, so let conversations wander beyond the task.
Let it get a little personal. Friendships deepen through gradual, mutual opening up. Share something real, in proportion, and give the other person room to do the same.
Follow up fast. A good first conversation fades if a fortnight passes. A short message within a day or two keeps the thread alive and signals you meant it.
Show up repeatedly. Consistency does the quiet work. Being reliably there, week after week, is how the hours bank and trust forms.

What gets in the way

Counting only work contact. Colleagues can become friends, but office hours alone rarely cross the line. The friendship hours come from shared life outside the task.
Waiting to be invited. Settled locals have full lives and forget to include the new person. Initiative is on you.
Hiding in the bubble. An all-expat circle is comfortable and limiting. Mix in local contact on purpose.
The language wall. Without some of the local language, whole social worlds stay shut. Even basic skills open doors, which is why our guide to learning the local language pairs so closely with making friends.
Giving up too soon. The hours take months to add up. Quitting at week six, just before the early acquaintances would have become friends, is the most common mistake of all.

Building a social life is one of the hardest and most important parts of a move abroad, and the one most worth doing on purpose.

Frequently asked questions

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

Longer than most people expect. Research by Jeffrey Hall suggests roughly 50 hours of shared time to reach casual friendship, 90 for a real friend and over 200 for a close one. Spread across busy weeks, that is months, not days, so feeling friendless early is normal rather than a sign you are doing it wrong.

Why is it so hard to make friends as an adult abroad?

Adults lack the built-in repeated contact that school and university provide, locals already have full social lives, and a new language can block easy conversation. The fix is to manufacture the repetition yourself through recurring activities, and to initiate rather than wait.

Should I make friends with locals or other expats?

Both, with deliberate effort on locals. Expat friends give comfort and shared understanding, but contact with host-country people is what most speeds up adjustment and eases culture shock and homesickness. A circle of only other foreigners keeps the country at a distance.

What is the best way to meet people in a new city?

Choose a few recurring fixtures over a stream of one-off events: a weekly class, a sports team, regular volunteering, a community group. The same faces returning each week bank the hours that build friendship, which scattered one-time meetups never do.

How do I turn an acquaintance into a real friend?

Initiate plans rather than waiting, move conversations from the shared activity to your actual lives, open up gradually and let them do the same, follow up within a day or two, and keep showing up. Consistency and initiative do most of the work.