How to Make Friends Studying Abroad (When You Know Nobody)

Moving to a new country for your studies is thrilling right up until the moment the airport doors close behind you and it hits you: you do not know a single person here. Everyone seems to already have a group. The lectures have not started. Your flat is quiet. This is the loneliest week of the whole experience, and almost every international student goes through it, including the ones who look like they have it all figured out.

Here is the good news. Making friends abroad is not about being the most outgoing person in the room. It is about putting yourself in a few right rooms early, then showing up again. Below are the tactics that actually work, in the order that works best. The honest version that most guides leave out is right at the top.

What is the single fastest way to make friends abroad?

Get into your city's student community online before you land, then meet those people in person as fast as possible. That is the whole mechanism. Most advice tells you to "put yourself out there" once you arrive, which is true but slow and scary when you are jet-lagged and alone. The shortcut is to arrive with the awkward first step already done.

• Before you fly: join your city's student WhatsApp community. Suddenly you are not arriving to silence. You are arriving to a group chat full of people in exactly your situation, asking the same questions you have.
• Your first weekend: go to the Welcome Festival, the big start-of-semester party where hundreds of new internationals turn up specifically to meet each other. One night does the work of a month of polite hallway hellos.

Online to break the ice, in person to make it stick. You can get both in one place: find your city and the chat and the festival are right there waiting.

Why join the student WhatsApp before you even arrive?

Because the hardest part of friendship is the first message, and a group chat takes the pressure off completely. Nobody in a city's student WhatsApp is a stranger for long, because everyone joined for the same reason you did. People post when their flight lands, who else is in their neighbourhood, which supermarket is cheapest, where people are meeting for a first drink. You can lurk for a day, then jump in.

By the time you land you already recognise names. You might already have plans. That single shift, from "I know nobody" to "I have three people to message," changes everything about how the first week feels. Your city's chat is one tap away once you pick your city.

I joined the WhatsApp from my parents' kitchen two weeks before I flew. By the time I landed I had already agreed to meet two other students for coffee. I never had the lonely week everyone warned me about.

How does the Welcome Festival actually turn names into friends?

A group chat is brilliant for breaking the ice, but friendships are made face to face. The Welcome Festival is built for exactly this. It runs at the start of each semester in your city, and the entire room is new students who showed up for the same reason you did: to meet people. That removes the scariest part of socialising, the fear that everyone else already has their group. At the Welcome Festival, nobody does. That is the point.

Take Barcelona as an example. It has more than 200,000 students and a famously international crowd around neighbourhoods like Gràcia, but a city that big can feel impossible to break into on your own. The Welcome Festival shrinks it down to one room of people you can actually meet in a night. The festival, the tickets and the semester pass all live on your city page, so the move is always the same: find your city first, and everything is there.

What are the tactics that actually work in your first two weeks?

The first fortnight is where friendships are decided. People's groups are still forming, doors are still open, and a tiny bit of effort goes a very long way. Here is what works:

• Say yes to everything for two weeks. The pre-drinks, the slightly random museum trip, the dinner with people you barely know. You can be picky later. Early on, volume wins.
• Sit next to the same person twice. Friendship is mostly repeated exposure. The person you sit beside in three lectures becomes a friend almost by accident. Pick a seat and keep it.
• Be the one who makes the plan. You do not need charisma, you need a time and a place. "Coffee at 4 after the lecture?" makes you the person others are grateful to. Organisers always have friends.
• Ask one good question and then listen. "Where are you from and how are you finding it so far?" opens almost anyone up. People remember whoever made them feel interesting.
• Join one repeating thing. A sports club, a society, a weekly language exchange. Anything that meets again next week, because seeing the same faces on a schedule is how acquaintances quietly become friends.
• Get out of your own nationality bubble. It is comforting to stick with people who speak your language, and you should keep those friends. But push yourself to mix. The best part of studying abroad is a friend group from eight different countries.

What if you are shy or your English is not perfect?

You are in the best possible crowd for it. Every international student is slightly out of their comfort zone, speaking a language that is not their first, far from home. Nobody is judging your accent, because half the room has one too. That shared nervousness is actually the glue.

If big rooms drain you, you do not have to be the loudest. Use the WhatsApp to set up a one-on-one coffee instead of working a crowd. Arrive at events a little early, when it is quieter and easier to talk to one or two people before it fills up. And remember that the person standing alone by the wall is almost always hoping someone will come and say hi. Be that someone, even once, and you have made a friend.

Where do you actually meet people once term gets going?

The Welcome Festival and the WhatsApp get you started, but keep the momentum going with the everyday places friendships grow:

• Your course and study groups. The people in your seminars are the easiest friends to make, because you already have something to talk about and you see them every week.
• Student housing and your neighbourhood. Flatmates and the people on your street are your built-in social base. If you are still sorting a room, do that early so you have a home to invite people back to. For housing in most cities, Socials Homes is the sister brand we trust to set students up; in Budapest and Riga, look at Fuse Stays for all-inclusive student co-living.
• Societies and sports. A repeating activity does the social heavy lifting for you. Pick one in your first week.
• City events. Once you are plugged into your city's community, the calendar fills with things to go to, and "want to come?" becomes the easiest message you will ever send.

What do students get wrong about making friends abroad?

The biggest mistake is waiting. People assume friendships will just happen once term settles, so they spend the first crucial fortnight alone in their room, then wonder in week five why everyone else already has a group. The truth is that those groups formed in the first two weeks, while they were waiting.

The second mistake is treating it as one big swing. You do not need to charm a room. You need a hundred small, low-stakes moments: a message in the group chat, a coffee, sitting in the same seat, saying yes to one more thing. The third mistake is staying glued to people from home or your own country. Comfortable, but it quietly walls you off from the whole reason you came.

None of this requires being a natural extrovert. It requires being early and being consistent, with the two tools that do most of the work for you: the student WhatsApp before you land, and the Welcome Festival the moment you arrive.

Frequently asked questions