How To Make Friends in London: The Complete Guide

In a city this big, friendships rarely happen by chance. Here is how women in London actually build a circle, from everyday routines in their own borough to the places newcomers gather.

Four women lying on a living-room rug, laughing over backgammon, shown on our London friendship page for women

9.1M+

Londoners at mid-2025 (ONS)

4 in 10

Residents aged 25 to 49, more than in any other region (ONS)

Local authorities: 32 boroughs and the City of London

Making a Very Big City Feel Smaller

London is the only English region whose population shrank between mid-2024 and mid-2025, yet with more than 9.1 million residents it is hardly short of people. What most of us are short of is time. Four in ten Londoners are aged 25 to 49, the years of long commutes, demanding jobs and frequent flat moves, so it is easy to know plenty of people and see none of them regularly. The fix is to shrink the city. Friendships here tend to grow in your own borough, whether that is Hackney, Croydon, Ealing or Richmond upon Thames, through the same exercise class, choir or café on the way to the station. The borough pages below show where to start in each part of the city, and Gofrendly, the women-only friendship app, can help you find someone a few streets away rather than an hour across town.

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Who Wrote This Guide

This London page was written by Claudia Gard and Ulrika Lilja for Gofrendly. Their angle is a city where most of us know plenty of people but see few of them often, and how a routine close to home can change that.