How to Make Friends as an Adult in a New City

Making friends as a kid was easy: you were assigned a desk next to someone for a year, and by June you were inseparable. As an adult in a new city, no one assigns you anything. The friendships don’t just happen — and nobody warns you how disorienting that is.

If you’ve moved somewhere new and the loneliness has caught you off guard, you’re not doing anything wrong. You’re up against a genuinely hard problem. Here’s what actually helps — grounded in how adult friendship really forms.

The shortcut: ImIn shows you people nearby who are up for the same activities you are — today or this week. Get it free on the App Store.

Why adult friendship is so much harder

Sociologists point to three ingredients that reliably produce friendship: repeated unplanned interaction, proximity, and a setting relaxed enough to let your guard down. School and university hand you all three for free. Adult life strips them away — you work remotely or with the same fixed colleagues, you drive door-to-door, and your evenings are spoken for.

So the fix isn’t “try harder to be likeable.” It’s to deliberately rebuild those three ingredients. Everything below is a way to do exactly that.

1. Trade breadth for repetition

One great conversation at a party rarely becomes a friendship. The same face, three weeks in a row, almost always does. Repetition is the engine. So instead of collecting one-off events, pick things that recur: a weekly run club, a Tuesday bouldering session, a monthly book club, the same café every Saturday morning.

Show up to the same thing enough times and you cross the invisible line from “stranger” to “regular” to “friend” — without ever having to force it.

2. Anchor friendship to an activity, not to “hanging out”

“We should grab a drink sometime” dies in the notes app. “I’m playing volleyball Thursday at 6, come” survives, because it’s specific, low-pressure, and gives you both something to do. Shared activity takes the weight off the conversation — you’re not performing friendship, you’re just doing a thing next to someone until the friendship shows up.

3. Be the one who organizes

Everyone is waiting to be invited. The person who sends the invite becomes the center of gravity. You don’t need to be an extrovert or throw dinner parties — you just need to be the one who says “I’m going to X on Saturday, anyone want to join?” It feels vulnerable the first few times. It works every time.

4. Say yes for the first three months

When you’re new, treat invitations like currency and spend all of it. Say yes to the coworker’s board-game night, the neighbour’s barbecue, the acquaintance’s gallery opening — even when you’re tired, even when it’s a maybe. Early momentum compounds. You can get selective later, once you have a base.

5. Lower the bar for what counts

You don’t need to find your soulmate best friend on week one. You need a gym buddy, a trivia teammate, someone to grab lunch with. “Weak ties” — the friendly-but-casual relationships — are what make a city feel like home, and they’re far easier to start. Depth comes later, on its own schedule.

6. Use tools built for this

Meetup groups, run clubs, class-based hobbies, and local community apps all exist for one reason: to manufacture the proximity and repetition adult life took away. This is exactly why we built ImIn — it shows you real people nearby who want to do the same things you do, whether that’s a hike this weekend or a coffee in the next hour. Verified profiles, no swiping, no cold-DM awkwardness. Just “I’m In.”

The one-line version

Pick something that repeats, show up more than once, and be the person who sends the invite. Do that for a season and a new city stops feeling like a place you live and starts feeling like a place you belong.

Ready to start? Download ImIn free and find people near you this week.

Just landed somewhere new? Read next: Where to Actually Meet People in Montreal »