The default changed
For about a decade the honest answer to "how did you two meet?" was an app, and everybody knew it. That has flipped faster than most people realise. In Eventbrite's Modern Meet-Cute Index, 77% of Gen Z report meeting romantic matches in real life rather than through an app, and the platform's own booking data shows where they're going.
The interesting part isn't the decline of the swipe, which has been written about to death. It's what filled the gap. Events built with explicit meeting-intent language, "singles", "come solo", grew 117% in the first half of 2026, and the growth isn't spread evenly. Some formats are quietly exploding and others aren't, and the pattern tells you something useful about what actually works.
Below are five, with the numbers Eventbrite recorded comparing the first half of 2026 with the same period a year earlier. One caveat worth stating up front: this is US platform data, and growth rates off a small base always look dramatic. Treat it as a strong signal about direction, not a precise measurement of your city.
1. Trivia and games nights
The standout in the entire dataset. Trivia nights grew 403% in events and 388% in attendance, comfortably the biggest mover, and not what most people would have guessed.
It makes sense once you look at the mechanics. A quiz gives you a team, which means you're immediately collaborating with strangers rather than being introduced to them. It supplies a rhythm of talking and not-talking, so silence is never awkward. It's cheap, it's weekly, and being bad at it is funny rather than embarrassing. Board-game nights work the same way: the game does the social labour that you'd otherwise have to do yourself.
How to start: find one that runs weekly and go alone. Turning up solo to a quiz is completely normal, and most teams will absorb a spare person without blinking: you're a resource, not an intruder.
2. Run clubs and athletic groups
The one everybody has heard about, and it earns the reputation. In Strava's Year in Sport survey, 58% of users said they'd made new friends through a run club, and around one in five said they'd been on a date with someone they met through exercise. Gen Z were four times more likely to want to meet people working out than at a bar.
We've written about why this works in more detail elsewhere, so the short version: repeat exposure to the same faces, a shared activity that removes conversational pressure, and no explicit dating expectation. Worth being precise about the data, though. The friendship number is far bigger than the dating number, so go for the social circle and treat romance as a possible side-effect.
How to start: nearly every club has a slow group, and it's usually free. Turn up to that one.
3. Craft and making circles
Pottery and craft circles grew 38% in events but 116% in attendance, and that gap is the interesting bit. The number of sessions barely moved compared with other categories; the number of people showing up to them more than doubled. Existing groups filled rather than new ones proliferating.
The appeal is that your hands are busy. If you've ever found a party exhausting, a table where everyone is concentrating on a thing is the opposite experience: conversation happens in comfortable bursts, and you have an obvious, permanent excuse to look away. Nobody is being appraised.
How to start: look for a repeating circle rather than a one-off taster. The taster is a nice evening; the weekly circle is where you become a familiar face.
4. Niche groups, the weirder the better
Two of the fastest-growing categories are ones you'd never predict. Mahjong gatherings were up 235% in events and 272% in attendance. Birdwatching meetups grew 131%.
There's a real principle here, and it's counter-intuitive: the more specific the interest, the easier the socialising. A generic "young professionals mixer" gives you nothing in common except a demographic, so you're back to small talk. A mahjong night gives you an entire shared world: rules to learn, etiquette, people who are pleased you turned up because the game needs four. Niche groups are also smaller and more repetitive, which is exactly the condition friendship needs.
How to start: pick the thing you're mildly embarrassed to be interested in. That embarrassment is a good signal: it means the group will be specific enough to work.
5. Movement socials and low-key swaps
The quieter end of the list. Pilates socials grew 84% in events and 87% in attendance, and plant swaps and terrarium workshops were up 117%. These sit somewhere between a class and a hangout: there's a structured thing to do, and then there's a bit where everyone talks.
What they have in common is a very low entry cost, socially speaking. You are ostensibly there for the exercise or the cutting from someone's monstera, so nothing is riding on the conversation. If it goes well you've met someone. If it doesn't, you did a pilates class. That asymmetry is why these formats are growing.
How to start: pick the one attached to something you already do. If you go to a class anyway, find the version with a social afterwards and stay for it. The staying is the whole trick.
What the five have in common
Look at the list and the pattern is hard to miss. Every format that's growing supplies the same three things: a shared activity so nobody has to generate conversation from nothing, repetition so familiarity can build, and no explicit expectation of dating so there's no pressure to perform.
That's also the exact inverse of what an app asks of you, which is a profile to perform, no shared activity, and a single high-stakes first impression. It explains why so many people describe the apps as tiring (a Forbes Health survey of 1,000 users found 78% felt exhausted by them at least sometimes) while describing a Tuesday quiz as easy. The quiz isn't easier because those people are more confident. It's easier because the format does the work.
Eventbrite's own social study points at the same thing: 58% of young adults said they want socialising to be secondary to the experience, and 69% wanted events combining different interests. People aren't avoiding connection. They're avoiding formats where connection is the stated agenda.
The gap none of them fill
There's one limitation running through the whole list, and it's worth naming because it's structural rather than fixable. All five run on a schedule. The quiz is Tuesday, the club is Thursday, the circle is the first Sunday of the month. That's a feature, the repetition is what makes them work, but it means none of them help on the evening you're already out, restless, and would happily meet someone if it were easy.
That in-between is the gap we built Everl for, so read this as an interested party's view rather than a neutral one. You go "on" only when you actually mean it, see who nearby is up for the same thing right now, and meet in a public place on a mutual yes. There's no profile to write, and you stay anonymous until you both choose otherwise. 18+.
It isn't a replacement for anything above, and it would be daft to claim otherwise. Turning up to the same room every week remains the most reliable way anyone has found to build a social life. The realistic mix is one recurring thing from this list, and something for the nights nothing is planned.
Pick one this week
Don't attempt the whole list. Pick the single format you'd attend even if you spoke to nobody, put it in the calendar as a standing commitment, and go four times before deciding whether it works. Almost everyone's first session feels flat, because familiarity hasn't accumulated yet, sessions four to six are where it turns, and most people who quit do it at session two.
The data above is really just a long way of saying that the thing which used to happen by accident now has to be chosen deliberately. That's a small loss and a fixable one. Choose the room, keep turning up, and the rest looks after itself.