How to Make Friends Abroad: Beating the Expat Loneliness Problem

Moving abroad is one of the most exciting things a person can do. It is also, for a startling number of people, one of the loneliest. The views from your new apartment are stunning. The food is incredible. The weather might be perfect. But six weeks in, you realize that you have no one to share any of it with — and the group chat back home is slowly moving on without you.

This is not a rare experience. It is the norm. Roughly 50% of expats report experiencing significant loneliness during their first year abroad, according to surveys by InterNations and the Expat Insider report. Even more striking: approximately 40% of expats return to their home country within three years, and isolation is consistently cited as the primary emotional driver behind that decision. Not visa problems. Not money. Loneliness.

If you spend any time on r/expats, r/IWantOut, or expat Facebook groups, you will see the same thread reposted every single week: “I moved to [dream country] and I have no friends. Is something wrong with me?” Nothing is wrong with them. Making friends as an adult is hard. Making friends as an adult in a foreign country where you do not speak the language fluently, do not understand the cultural codes, and have lost every organic social structure you spent decades building — that is exponentially harder.

This guide is a practical, honest look at why expat loneliness happens, what the research says about adult friendship formation, and the specific strategies that actually work. Whether you are already abroad and struggling, or planning a move and want to prepare, this is the article I wish someone had handed me before my first international relocation.

Why Making Friends Abroad Is So Hard: The Science

Before diving into strategies, it helps to understand why this problem is so universal. It is not about you being awkward, introverted, or unlikable. There are structural reasons why adult friendship is difficult abroad — and understanding them makes the solutions feel less forced.

The Three Requirements for Friendship

Sociologist Rebecca Adams identified three conditions that must be present for close friendships to form: proximity, repeated unplanned interactions, and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down. Think about how your closest friendships at home developed. You probably met through school, university, work, or a shared neighborhood — environments that automatically provided all three conditions. You did not have to try. The structure did the work for you.

When you move abroad, every single one of those structures disappears overnight. You leave behind your workplace, your neighborhood, your gym regulars, your weekend routine. You arrive in a new country with zero organic infrastructure for meeting people. Every interaction has to be intentionally created, and that takes enormous energy — especially when you are simultaneously navigating a new bureaucracy, learning a transit system, and possibly working across time zones.

The Language Barrier Is Deeper Than Words

Even expats who speak the local language at a conversational level report that friendship feels different in a second language. Humor is the first casualty — your timing is off, your references do not land, your wit does not translate. Vulnerability is the second. Sharing personal struggles, which is the foundation of deep friendship, requires a level of linguistic nuance that takes years to develop. Many expats describe feeling like a “less interesting version of themselves” in their adopted language, and that gap between who you are and who you can express yourself as is genuinely painful.

Cultural Norms Around Friendship Vary Enormously

In the United States, friendliness is often mistaken for friendship. Americans tend to be warm, open, and quick to invite someone for coffee. This creates an expectation that friendship moves fast. In many cultures — particularly Northern European, East Asian, and some Latin American ones — friendship follows different rules entirely. In Finland, it is common for people to have a close circle of friends they have known since childhood, and the cultural expectation is not that you will make new close friends as an adult. In Germany, friendships are deep but form slowly; an acquaintance might remain at the “acquaintance” level for years before being considered a true friend. In Japan, social relationships are often structured around group affiliation — your company, your university — and outside those structures, initiation is uncommon.

None of these cultural norms are wrong. But if you arrive expecting American-style openness in a culture that operates differently, the mismatch can feel like rejection when it is actually just a different social operating system.

The Loss of Your Existing Network Hits Harder Than Expected

Most people underestimate how much emotional weight their existing social network carried. Your old friends were not just people you hung out with. They were your sounding board, your emotional regulation system, your identity mirror. When that network drops away — not all at once, but gradually, as time zones and life stages create distance — the loneliness is not just about missing fun. It is about losing a core part of how you understood yourself. This is why expat loneliness often feels existential rather than simply social.

Practical Strategies That Actually Work

The good news is that expat loneliness is solvable. Not overnight, and not without effort, but reliably solvable. The strategies below are ranked roughly by how consistently they produce results, based on expat community feedback, social science research, and the lived experience of thousands of people who have navigated this exact challenge.

1. Co-Working Spaces: The Modern Third Place

If you work remotely, a co-working space is the single highest-impact investment you can make in your social life abroad. It sounds counterintuitive — you are paying money to do work you could do from your apartment. But co-working spaces provide exactly what sociologists say friendship requires: proximity, repeated unplanned interactions, and a relaxed setting. You see the same faces every day. You share a coffee machine. You overhear conversations that lead to lunch invitations. This is how friendship happens naturally.

The best co-working spaces for social connection are not the giant corporate ones. Look for spaces with fewer than 50 members, community events, and a culture of socializing. Spaces like Selina, Outsite, and local independent co-working spaces in cities like Lisbon, Medellin, Chiang Mai, and Mexico City have built entire expat communities around their membership base. Budget $100 to $250 per month. Consider it a social infrastructure cost, not a business expense.

2. Sports Leagues and Fitness Communities

Joining a recreational sports league is one of the most effective friendship strategies in any country, and it scales across cultures. Sports provide all three friendship conditions automatically — you show up at the same place, see the same people, and the shared physical activity lowers social barriers. You do not need to be athletic. Look for casual leagues, running clubs, yoga studios, CrossFit boxes, martial arts gyms, or hiking groups. The sport matters less than the regularity and the social component.

In Latin America, joining a futbol team is an instant community. In Southeast Asia, Muay Thai gyms function as social hubs. In Europe, climbing gyms and running clubs have become the meeting places of choice for young professionals and expats. The key is showing up consistently — not once, not three times, but week after week until your presence becomes expected.

3. Language Exchange and Tandem Partnerships

Language exchange is secretly one of the best social strategies available to expats because it solves two problems simultaneously: you improve your language skills and you meet locals who are explicitly motivated to connect with foreigners. Apps like Tandem, HelloTalk, and ConversationExchange let you find language partners. Many cities also have in-person language exchange meetups through platforms like Meetup.com, Mundo Lingo, and Polyglot events.

The beauty of language exchange is that it bypasses the cultural barrier. The person you are meeting has already signaled openness to cross-cultural connection. The conversation structure — you speak their language for 30 minutes, they speak yours for 30 minutes — gives you a natural framework for interaction. And because you are helping each other, the relationship starts with reciprocity, which is the foundation of genuine friendship.

4. InterNations and Organized Expat Events

InterNations is the world's largest expat network, with communities in over 420 cities. Their events range from casual after-work drinks to activity-based outings like hiking, cooking classes, and cultural tours. The quality varies significantly by city — in major expat hubs like Barcelona, Dubai, Bangkok, and Lisbon, InterNations events regularly attract 50 to 200 people. In smaller cities, events might be smaller but often more intimate and likely to produce real friendships.

The free tier gives you access to events, but the paid membership (roughly $50 to $100 per year) allows you to RSVP and access community forums. Other organized expat communities worth exploring include Internations Ambassadors events, local expat associations (almost every country has a formal American, British, Canadian, or Australian association), and chambers of commerce events if you are in business.

5. Volunteering

Volunteering is the most underutilized friendship strategy for expats. It places you in regular, structured contact with locals who tend to be community-minded and empathetic — exactly the kind of people who make good friends. It gives you purpose during the adjustment period when many expats feel unmoored. And it earns you genuine social capital in your new community in a way that simply living there does not.

Options include environmental cleanup groups, animal shelters, food banks, teaching English at community centers, and contributing to local NGOs. Platforms like Workaway, WWOOF, and local volunteer matching services can connect you with opportunities. Even if your language skills are limited, physical tasks — building, cleaning, sorting — require minimal conversation but create shared experiences that naturally evolve into friendships.

6. Expat Facebook Groups and Online Communities

Almost every city with a meaningful expat population has at least one active Facebook group. Search for “[City Name] Expats,” “[City Name] Digital Nomads,” or “[City Name] Internationals.” These groups serve as both information hubs and social connectors. People regularly post looking for hiking partners, dinner companions, or simply someone to grab a coffee with. The barrier to entry is low — post a brief introduction, mention what you are looking for, and you will often get responses within hours.

Reddit communities like r/expats, r/digitalnomad, and country-specific subreddits (r/portugal, r/mexicocity, r/Bangkok) are also valuable for advice and occasionally for meetups. WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, and Discord servers for specific expat communities are increasingly common and often more active than Facebook for day-to-day social planning.

7. Bumble BFF and Friendship Apps

Bumble BFF uses the same swipe mechanic as its dating app but matches you with people looking for platonic friendship. It works surprisingly well in expat-heavy cities because there is a high concentration of people in the same situation — new to the city, looking to meet people, and willing to make the first move. Other apps in this space include Meetup (event-based), Patook (strictly platonic), and Friender.

The key to making friendship apps work is treating them like a commitment, not a casual experiment. Set a goal of meeting one new person per week for your first two months. Not all of these will become friends — most will not — but you only need a few connections to stick before your social life gains its own momentum.

8. Take a Class — Anything

Cooking classes, pottery workshops, dance lessons, photography walks, painting courses, surfing lessons — the specific activity matters far less than the structure. Classes provide regular, scheduled contact with the same group of people over multiple weeks. This repeated exposure is what moves someone from “person I recognize” to “person I know” to “friend.” Bonus: you are learning something new in a country where everything is already novel, which combats the stagnation that often accompanies expat isolation.

Countries Where Making Friends Is Easiest

Not all countries present equal challenges when it comes to building a social life. Some destinations have large, well-established expat communities, cultures that are naturally warm and inclusive toward foreigners, and infrastructure (co-working spaces, international events, English proficiency) that makes connection easier. If social life is a priority in your relocation decision — and the data says it should be — these countries deserve extra weight in your calculations.

Why These Countries Stand Out

Portugal earns the top spot because it combines virtually every factor that makes social life abroad easier. Lisbon and Porto have some of the largest and most active expat communities in Europe. The co-working scene is mature and social. Portuguese culture is genuinely warm — not performatively friendly, but authentically welcoming. English proficiency is high, especially among younger Portuguese. And the cost of living is low enough that people have time and money to socialize, which matters more than most guides acknowledge. See our full Portugal guide.

Mexico and Colombia benefit from Latin American social culture, which is inherently communal. Meals are shared. Neighbors talk. Strangers become acquaintances quickly. Mexico City, Oaxaca, and Medellin have exploded as remote work hubs, creating large, active communities of international residents who are all in the same boat — new, looking for connection, and available. The cost of living means socializing is cheap: a dinner out with friends might cost $10 to $15 per person.

Thailand has been an expat destination for decades, which means the infrastructure is mature. Chiang Mai, in particular, has a co-working and community ecosystem that is almost purpose-built for social connection. See our full Thailand guide. Indonesia — specifically Bali — has created a unique model where co-living spaces, community dinners, and shared workspaces are the default, not the exception. It is arguably the easiest place in the world to avoid isolation as a newcomer.

Spain deserves special mention for its social culture. Spanish life is built around shared experiences — long dinners, tapas bars, weekend markets, neighborhood festivals. The concept of “sobremesa” (lingering at the table after a meal to talk) is a built-in social ritual that creates exactly the kind of relaxed, repeated contact that friendships need.

Countries Where Making Friends Is Notoriously Difficult

Some countries are extraordinary places to live but genuinely challenging places to build a social life. This is not a criticism of these cultures — it is information you need before you commit to a move. Understanding the difficulty in advance allows you to plan for it rather than being blindsided.

The Nordic Countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway

The Nordics consistently rank among the best quality of life countries in the world. They also consistently rank among the hardest places to make friends as an expat. The InterNations Expat Insider survey regularly places Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway in the bottom ten for “ease of making local friends.” This is not because Nordic people are unfriendly. It is because the social structure is different. Most Scandinavians form their core friend groups in childhood and maintain those relationships for life. There is less cultural expectation — and less cultural infrastructure — for forming new adult friendships.

How to navigate it: Lean heavily into structured activities. Swedish “fika” culture (coffee and cake as a social ritual) is real, but it happens within existing relationships, not with strangers. Join a forening (association) — Scandinavians organize much of their social life around formal clubs for sports, hobbies, music, and outdoor activities. Accept that friendships will form slowly, measured in months and years rather than weeks. Prioritize the expat community for your immediate social needs while you build local connections in parallel.

Japan: Group-Based Social Structures

Japan is one of the safest, most fascinating, and most efficient countries in the world. It is also, for many Western expats, deeply isolating. Japanese social life is organized around uchi (in-group) and soto (out-group) dynamics. Your in-group — typically your company, school alumni, or family — is where deep relationships live. As a foreigner, you are structurally soto unless you enter through a recognized institution like a Japanese employer.

How to navigate it: If possible, work for a Japanese company or join a Japanese organization. The after-work drinking culture (nomikai) and company social events are genuine friendship-building mechanisms, not just obligations. Learn Japanese beyond survival level — the cultural nuance embedded in the language is essential for real connection. Join a local hobby circle (saakuru) for activities like cooking, hiking, or photography. The international community in Tokyo and Osaka is substantial and active, so do not neglect it while pursuing local friendships.

Switzerland: Polite Distance

Switzerland scores at the very top of quality of life rankings but near the bottom for social ease. Swiss culture values privacy, punctuality, and a certain formal distance that can feel impenetrable to newcomers. Invitations to Swiss homes are rare and significant — if you receive one, it means something. The flip side is that casual socializing of the type common in the US, Australia, or Latin America is less culturally available.

How to navigate it: Join a Verein (club). Switzerland has one of the highest rates of club membership in the world, and these organizations — for everything from shooting to yodeling to chess — are the primary social infrastructure outside of family and work. Learn the local language (Swiss German, French, or Italian depending on region), because language is the gateway to inclusion in a way that is even more pronounced here than elsewhere. Be patient. Swiss friendships, once formed, tend to be remarkably deep and lifelong.

The Expat Bubble: Trap or Lifeline?

Every expat advice column warns against the “expat bubble” — socializing exclusively with other foreigners, speaking English, eating familiar food, and never truly integrating into local culture. The criticism is valid, but it is also incomplete. The reality is more nuanced, and getting this balance wrong in either direction can make your experience abroad significantly worse.

When to Lean Into the Expat Community

During your first three to six months, the expat community is not a bubble. It is a lifeline. You need people who understand what you are going through, who can recommend a doctor who speaks English, who know which bureaucratic office you need to visit for your residence permit, and who are available for a spontaneous dinner on a Tuesday night when homesickness hits. Trying to “go local only” from day one is a recipe for isolation, especially if your language skills are still developing.

The expat community also provides something that local friendships often cannot in the early stages: emotional shorthand. Other expats understand the disorientation of being abroad, the frustration of bureaucracy in a foreign language, and the strange guilt of missing home while living in a place you chose. These shared experiences create fast bonds that serve an important psychological function during the adjustment period.

When to Push Beyond It

The expat bubble becomes a trap when it prevents you from building the skills and relationships that will make your life abroad sustainable long-term. If, after a year, all your friends are from your home country, you have not improved your language skills, and you could be living in any international city in the world for all the local connection you have, you are missing the point of living abroad. At that stage, the bubble is not supporting you — it is limiting you.

The ideal trajectory looks something like this: lean heavily into the expat community during months one through six for stability and social survival. From months three through twelve, start layering in local connections through language exchange, sports, volunteering, and neighborhood relationships. By year two, your social circle should be a mix of international friends and locals, with the ratio shifting increasingly toward local connections as your language and cultural fluency improve.

The Hybrid Approach

The healthiest expat social lives are hybrid. Your expat friends give you convenience, shared context, and emotional support. Your local friends give you language practice, cultural immersion, and the sense that you are truly living in your new country rather than just staying there. You need both, especially in the first few years. Do not let purist integration ideology prevent you from getting the immediate social support you need, and do not let the comfort of the expat community prevent you from doing the harder work of genuine cultural integration.

The Friendship Timeline: What to Expect

Unrealistic expectations are one of the biggest contributors to expat unhappiness. People expect to recreate the depth and breadth of a social network that took them decades to build — in a few months. That is not how friendship works, and the mismatch between expectation and reality creates unnecessary suffering. Here is a more realistic timeline:

• Month 1–2: You will meet many people but have no close friends. This is normal. Focus on saying yes to everything, attending every event, and collecting a wide pool of acquaintances. Do not judge the quality of your social life during this period.
• Month 3–6: Two or three people from your acquaintance pool will start to feel more like friends. You will have inside jokes, default plans, and the beginnings of genuine comfort. This is also when the first wave of loneliness often hits hardest, paradoxically, because you have enough social contact to recognize what is still missing.
• Month 6–12: Your social life starts to feel more organic. You have people you call without a specific reason. You have a “usual” place. Plans happen without effort. This is the inflection point where most expats report that their new city starts to feel like home.
• Year 2+: Depth develops. Friendships that began as shared-circumstance convenience evolve into genuine, chosen relationships. You may also notice some early expat friendships fading as people move on — this is normal and does not mean you failed. Expat social networks are inherently more fluid than settled ones.

What to Do When Nothing Seems to Work

Sometimes you do everything right — you join the co-working space, attend the events, sign up for the language exchange — and it still does not click. If you have been actively trying for six months and still feel deeply isolated, consider these possibilities:

• You might be in the wrong city, not the wrong country. A person who feels isolated in rural Provence might thrive in Lyon. Someone lonely in a small Thai beach town might find their people in Chiang Mai. Expat communities concentrate in specific cities, and being 200 kilometers from the nearest one can make an enormous difference.
• You might need professional support. Expat loneliness can shade into clinical depression, especially when combined with the stress of cultural adjustment, bureaucratic frustration, and distance from family. Online therapy platforms like BetterHelp and Talkspace make professional support accessible regardless of location. There is no weakness in recognizing when loneliness has become something more.
• Your expectations might need recalibrating. If you are comparing your social life abroad to the one you had at home after 20 years of living in the same city, you are setting an impossible benchmark. A handful of genuine connections is a successful social life abroad, especially in the first two years.
• The country genuinely might not be the right fit. Cultural compatibility is real, and no amount of effort can overcome a fundamental mismatch between your social needs and a country's social norms. A highly extroverted person who needs constant social stimulation may struggle in rural Scandinavia no matter what they do. This is not failure. It is information. Use it to make a better choice. Our country selection framework can help you identify destinations that align with your social priorities.

Choosing a Country with Social Life in Mind

Most relocation guides focus on cost of living, visa requirements, healthcare, and safety — all critically important. But social connection deserves a place in your decision matrix. The data is clear: loneliness is the number one emotional reason expats abandon their moves. A country that scores perfectly on cost and climate but leaves you isolated is not a good fit, no matter what the spreadsheet says.

When evaluating destinations, consider:

• Size of the expat community. Larger communities mean more events, more sub-groups (parents, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes), and higher odds of finding people you genuinely connect with.
• Cultural openness to foreigners. Some cultures integrate newcomers naturally. Others require years of effort. Neither is wrong, but know what you are signing up for.
• English proficiency. If you do not speak the local language, English proficiency determines how quickly you can build connections. Countries like the Netherlands, Portugal, and the Nordic countries have very high English levels. Countries like Japan, South Korea, and France have lower everyday English proficiency.
• Social infrastructure. Co-working spaces, meetup groups, international organizations, sports leagues — these are the building blocks of social life abroad. A city with ten co-working spaces and weekly expat events gives you a structural advantage over one with none.
• Climate and outdoor culture. Warm-weather destinations with an outdoor culture naturally encourage more spontaneous social interaction. You are more likely to meet someone walking on the beach or sitting in a plaza than commuting through a dark, cold city in January.

For a complete framework on weighing these and other factors, see our guide on how to choose which country to move to. And for a data-driven look at which countries deliver the best overall living experience, explore our quality of life rankings.

Final Thoughts: Loneliness Is Temporary, If You Act

Here is the truth that the glossy expat Instagram accounts do not show you: almost everyone who moves abroad goes through a period of significant loneliness. The people who look like they have it all figured out — the ones posting brunch photos with their new international friend group — went through the same awkward, lonely phase. They just did it before you arrived.

The difference between expats who build thriving social lives abroad and those who retreat home is not personality type, language skills, or luck. It is sustained effort during the uncomfortable early phase. Showing up to the meetup when you would rather stay home. Sending the follow-up message after meeting someone interesting. Accepting the coffee invitation even though your social battery is drained. Treating your social life as seriously as you treat finding an apartment or setting up a bank account.

The loneliness is real. It is valid. It is also temporary — if you actively work through it rather than waiting for it to resolve on its own. The friends you make abroad will become some of the most meaningful relationships of your life, precisely because you chose each other in a context where nothing was automatic. That is worth the discomfort of the beginning.

If you are ready to find a country that fits not just your budget and career, but your social needs and lifestyle, start with our data-driven country rankings or take the personalized quiz to see where you would thrive.