Find local events near you when you travel the world easily with the best apps for local events. Meet people when you travel, be more than just a tourist
The best apps & sites for local events
Meetup – Find and join events and groups
This massive database is one of the best places to look for events when you travel.
You can search for tours, workshops, social meetups, lectures, parties and so on, run by local groups and clubs.
Want to meet people in your profession? There’s likely to be a meetup group for that.
Looking for people to join you for a concert tomorrow night? You can find groups that go out together. Looking for a language exchange meeting? You’ll probably find more than one. Looking for hiking partners?
Eventbrite – The user-friendly way to find events near you
Another site I use on a regular basis to find events near me is Eventbrite.
Unlike Meetup, this one isn’t about groups or clubs, but just about events.
It would normally detect your location automatically and then you can search by category, event type, date and price.
To narrow down the search results, start with the date and enter the relevant times of your visit under “Custom Date”.
You can also use the Browse Events button instead of searching.
It’s a nice way to find inspiration and some surprising activities. Click Browse and you’ll get a list of events near you.
Couchsurfing Events – A warm community for social meetups
While it’s normally associated with finding a free place to sleep, CouchSurfing is also one of the best apps for local events and one of the most useful tools to find people to meet with. I use it whenever I travel.
There are different ways to meet people and find events through CouchSurfing:
Use CouchSurfing Hangouts to find other people nearby. These may be locals or other travellers.
Some CouchSurfing groups run events around a specific area of interest, like biking tours, photography workshops and lots more.
Anyone can join a group and post in it, so you can also organise a meetup yourself, or find partners for going out to parties, movies and so on.
One important tip: check the date of the last post to see if the group is actually active, as there are many dormant groups.
Facebook – Find events near you and great local groups
Facebook keeps developing its internal search engine, so finding events is becoming easier and easier.
You can either browse events near you or find events run by Facebook groups.
Go to your personal Facebook events page and you’ll see some upcoming events near you, as Facebook detects your location.
This list may be very long, so instead of just scrolling down, it’s best to narrow down the results.
Start with the dates of your visit.
Then you can filter results by category, like Music, Crafts, Sports, Comedy etc – you’ll see a list of categories on the right. Click the “more” link for a longer list of categories.
