After the main course, the same thing happens at every julebord, the Norwegian office Christmas party: it goes quiet. Somebody has to rescue the evening now, and that somebody is usually you. Here are 14 Christmas party games for adults that do exactly that, sorted by when in the evening they work and how much cringe they cost.
Last updated: 28 August 2026
What is a julebord?
The julebord is the Norwegian Christmas party. It runs through November and December, classically with ribbe or pinnekjøtt on the table. According to the Juleundersøkelsen, Kantar's Christmas survey for NHO Reiseliv in 2025, only around half of Norwegians go at all; those who do usually have one, and one in five has two or three: one with work, one with friends, one with the club. What sets it apart from the usual work Christmas party is less the food than the ambition: a quiz, music bingo or a game is simply part of the evening at most julebords.
💡 By the way: for the team contests further down, our SwigSki3000® — the modular Shotski is made for the job. Four people, one movement, one photo.
When in the evening games actually work
Put the main game between the main course and dessert. Before that everyone is busy eating; after it the seating plan dissolves and half the room is already outside.
A running order that has proved itself: a quiet get-to-know-you game with the aperitif, one that forces nobody out of their chair. A calm quiz round during the meal, the kind you can play between two courses. Then the highlight between main course and dessert. That is the moment when the room is fullest and the mood is highest. Music after that. And if you are still planning something, plan it small.
Two mistakes cost the same evening every year: starting too early, before everyone has arrived, and running too many games back to back. Three good moments beat eight mediocre ones.
Three kinds of julebord, three sets of rules
A julebord is not just a julebord. What lands with your mates falls flat at the office.
The company julebord (jobb-julebord). Your boss, your colleagues, the intern and the person from accounts nobody knows privately. Rule of thumb: if you can picture it still being a topic in the office kitchen on Monday, drop it. Employment law applies at the julebord too. The Norwegian line "what happens at the julebord stays at the julebord" is quoted in Norwegian sources almost exclusively in order to knock it down.
The friends' julebord (guttas julebord). Your own crowd, often up at a cabin, usually across a whole weekend. Here anything goes that the group allows. This is where drinking games that need no kit fit into the programme, the ones you are better off leaving out at a work event.
The julebord at home. Twelve to twenty people in a living room. The limiting factor is floor space, not ideas. Anything that needs a run-up, an amplifier or a free hallway is out. If you are hosting at home, you need games that happen at the table. There are four of them below.
The classics: pakkeleken, music bingo, Christmas quiz
Three games turn up at practically every Norwegian julebord. Most lists just name them. Here are the rules that actually decide whether they work.
Pakkeleken — the gift-stealing game
People: 6–20 · Duration: 25–40 min · Kit: one wrapped gift per person, two dice, a timer · Cringe factor: none
Everyone brings an anonymously wrapped gift, guide price 50 to 100 kroner, so roughly five to nine euros. If you know White Elephant or Yankee Swap, you are in the right area — but pakkeleken is played with dice, and that changes everything. All the parcels go into the middle of the table.
Phase 1: take turns rolling. Whoever rolls a six takes a parcel — without opening it. This goes on until all the parcels are gone.
Phase 2: now a timer runs, ten to fifteen minutes. People keep rolling, and a six lets you steal a parcel from somebody else. When the alarm goes off, everyone keeps whatever they are holding. Only then do you unwrap.
A widespread variant uses two dice: two sixes means take, one six means give one away, a double without a six means everybody passes their parcel to the left. That slows down the greedy ones, and the same three people do not end up with everything. Which is why it is the better choice for the office.
Music bingo — bingo with songs instead of numbers
People: 15–60 · Duration: 30–45 min · Kit: cards, playlist, speaker · Cringe factor: none
Instead of numbers, the cards carry song titles. Every card has the same titles, just in a different order. You play twenty seconds of each track; anyone with that title on their card crosses it off. The first full line across, down or diagonally shouts "bingo".
This one is the quiet star for big groups: it works for fifteen guests just as well as for sixty, everyone stays seated, and nobody has to stand up in front of the room. For a julebord, take half Christmas songs and half the hits from the years when the group was young.
Christmas quiz — the quiz about the year
People: 6–60 · Duration: 20–30 min · Kit: question sheet, pen and paper · Cringe factor: low
Build twenty questions in four blocks of five: five about the past year in the company or the group, five about Christmas in general, five about the people in the room ("who here has, this year…"), five estimation questions with a number as the answer. Teams of four to six, scores on a board.
The block about the people in the room lands hardest. Which is exactly where you have to be careful: only use questions whose answer the person has already told the group themselves.
Games at the table — nobody has to stand up
The most rewarding category when you are hosting at home or not everyone knows each other: nothing to set up, nobody has to perform in front of the group.
Who am I? Everyone gets a note stuck to their forehead and asks yes-or-no questions in turn. At a company julebord, names from your own industry work better than celebrities. 6–20 people · 15 min · notes and tape · Cringe factor: low
Two truths, one lie. Everyone tells the room three things about themselves, the room guesses. Always works when there are new colleagues in the group. 4–15 people · 20 min · nothing · Cringe factor: none
Guess the colleague. Everyone writes an anonymous answer to the same question in advance ("what was your most embarrassing moment this year?"), the host reads them out, the room guesses. 8–30 people · 20 min · notes · Cringe factor: medium, depending on the question
Guess the price. Five objects from the table, everyone estimates the price, whoever is closest takes the point. Sounds banal, runs surprisingly well. any number · 10 min · five things off the table · Cringe factor: none
Games that get everyone on their feet
Four games for the moment when the mood tips or dessert takes too long. All of them work without a stage and without technology.
Musical chairs with Christmas songs. The classic, and it works with adults too, provided nobody has a bad back. 8–20 people · 10 min · chairs and music · Cringe factor: low
Charades. Two teams, terms from the company year or from Christmas films. 8–24 people · 20 min · notes · Cringe factor: medium
Dance-off. Two volunteers, thirty seconds, the room decides by volume. Keep it short, otherwise it drags. any number · 10 min · music · Cringe factor: high — volunteers only
Gingerbread house against the clock. Teams build against the clock, judged on how well it stands up and on how it looks. Two separate prizes, otherwise the same team always wins. 8–20 people · 30 min · kits · Cringe factor: none
The Christmas Olympics: three stations
In Norway, OL stands for Olympiske Leker, the Olympic Games. That is exactly how it is meant. Instead of single games, a small tournament: teams rotate through three stations, each one scores points, and one team wins at the end. The advantage over a list of games is that nobody has to sit and watch. Everyone is busy at the same time.
Station 1: the synchronised lift. Four people per team line up side by side and hold a Shotski together, one glass per person, each in its own binding. On the word, everyone lifts at once. The clock only stops when all four glasses are empty and the ski is back level. It takes two attempts before that works. One person lifts too early and the whole team spills.
Points: one for the fastest team, one for the best photo. The second point is the one everyone remembers.
Alcohol-free: apple juice or Christmas lemonade. It is about the timing, not the contents.
You can work out how many people fit on one ski: the SwigSki3000® is built from four modules of 25 centimetres each, so exactly one metre. Hence the name meterski. One extension set turns that into six places, two make eight. We do not recommend going longer: past that it gets unwieldy and the group can no longer coordinate it. If twelve people are meant to lift at once, use two short skis side by side instead.
Station 2: the steady hand. Two teams; at the far end of the room stands a board with full glasses in their bindings. Each team member walks over once, clicks a glass out, drinks and clicks it back in without a single drop landing on the board. No clock, no rush: only the stains are counted. Rushing loses.
Alcohol-free: works identically with juice. Clicking the glass out spills the same whatever is in it.
Station 3: Christmas song in three seconds. Three seconds of each track, whoever shouts the title first takes the point. Needs nothing but a playlist and works as the calm counterweight to the two active stations.
A julebord without pressure to drink
Build the programme so that it makes no difference what is in the glass. Then the whole table is in, instead of half of it. That is not a detail: eleven to twelve per cent of Norwegian employees have experienced pressure to drink at work, and just as many have stayed away from a company party because of it. Scaled up, that is more than 300,000 people.
None of which means the programme has to get tamer. It just has to work whatever is in the glass. Every game on this page does. The synchronised lift is about whether four people hit the same movement. The ski boot glass does not care what is in it. Whether that is aquavit, mulled cider or apple juice, you cannot see it in the photo. And if the alcohol-free option is named from the start, the whole table is in, instead of half of it.
In practice that means naming the alcohol-free option when you announce the round, not when somebody asks for it. And keep the age limit in view: in Norway that is 18 for anything under 22 per cent by volume, 20 above it.
For companies: what the organiser buys
At a company julebord, somebody on the team draws the short straw every year and gets to sort out the kit. There are two separate sums to do here, and the most common mistake is mixing them up.
Table gift: one set per four place settings. The glass sits at the place setting and replaces the name card, over the course of the evening it clicks into the binding, and afterwards everyone takes it home. For twelve people that is three sets, for forty it is ten. The ski boot glasses with binding are built for exactly that: real glass from our own mould in Austria, assembled by hand at Caritas Wendelstein and in the workshops of Lebenshilfe Piding, calibrated and dishwasher-safe. The calibration is the point at which the discussion ends for restaurants and staff canteens: calibrated glasses may be served from.
Stations: do not calculate per head. A Shotski is an attraction, not a dispensing system. Twelve people need one that runs in waves; at forty, two or three make sense, not ten. The rhythm: announce it three or four times over the evening. In the basic set, four people lift per round; after ten rounds a group of forty has been through once.
If you want a logo or a year on the glass: engraving is a service on request with us, from roughly a hundred pieces, so from about 25 sets. At a company with several departments that is entirely realistic. It does not run through the shop but through an email to vertrieb@apres-allstars.com.
Games you should leave out
Ask a Norwegian forum for good selskapsleker, the local word for party games, and one answer comes back strikingly often: "please, none at all". Usually it comes down to one of four sorts.
- Games that put people on show one by one. Everyone has to do something in turn while 39 people watch. That is not a game, that is an exam.
- Games with physical contact. At a company julebord, never. There is no version of it that is fine for everyone.
- Games that dig into private life. "Who in this room has ever…" is funny with friends and a problem in the office on Monday.
- Games that run too long. Anything over forty minutes loses half the room. Better two short rounds with a break in between.
And the rule that catches all of it: anyone who does not want to join in does not have to. A game you can drop out of without explaining yourself is automatically the better game.
Once the julebord is done, the next date is already in the calendar: for New Year's Eve we have collected the New Year's Eve drinking games, and if you are planning the whole evening at home, our Christmas party ideas cover menu, decorations and cocktails.
Common questions about Christmas party games
How many games does a julebord need?
Three is enough. A quiet one as people arrive, a calm one during the meal and a highlight between main course and dessert. More than three programme points back to back tires the room out, and the fourth almost never lands as well as the second.
When in the evening is the best time to play?
The main game belongs between main course and dessert: everyone is fed, everyone is there and the seating plan still holds. Before that it interrupts the meal, after it the group breaks up.
How do you avoid embarrassing games at a company julebord?
Three filters: nothing that puts one person in front of the group on their own, nothing with physical contact, nothing that digs into private life. And build every game so that people can drop out without explaining themselves. A quiz, music bingo and team stations all pass that test.
How does pakkeleken work — and what should the gift cost?
The guide price is 50 to 100 kroner, so roughly five to nine euros. Phase one: roll in turn, a six lets you take a parcel without opening it. Phase two: timer set to ten or fifteen minutes, a six lets you steal. When the alarm goes, everyone keeps what they are holding. For the office, take the two-dice variant: two sixes to take, one six to give away.
Do julebord games work at home as well?
Yes, but with a different selection. At home you have no space, no stage and no technology. So choose games that happen at the table: quiz, Who am I, Two truths one lie, Guess the price. Relay games and musical chairs need a hall or at least an empty hallway, and musical chairs needs neighbours with a sense of humour.
Which games work completely without alcohol?
All of them on this page. Quiz, music bingo, charades and gingerbread houses do without it anyway, and at the stations it is the timing that decides, not what is in the glass: with apple juice or Christmas lemonade the synchronised lift runs exactly the same.
Sources
Store norske leksikon: "julebord" and "norsk julemat" · NHO Reiseliv / Kantar, Juleundersøkelsen 2025 (attendance and number of julebords) · Folkehelseinstituttet, "Alkohol og arbeidsliv II" (2019, data base 2015–2018) · Extrapolation of the twelve per cent to the number of employees: HMS-magasinet (2019) · Blå Kors / Ipsos, study on drinking habits (August 2021) · Helsedirektoratet, Alkoholloven § 1-5 (age limits) · LO-advokatene and Tenden Advokatfirma on employment law at the julebord · Rule descriptions for pakkeleken and music bingo: silentclub.no, sillysanta.no · Exchange rate: xe.com, as of August 2026.