One of football’s most prestigious competitions is upon us – the World Cup, of course! What better way to celebrate the major sporting occasion with friends and family (and other big football fans) than throwing an epic World Cup theme party?
If you’re struggling with the whole planning process, we know a thing or two about celebrating here at thortful and are more than happy to help give you some tips on how to throw an epic party! So, carry on reading to discover all our ideas including drinking games, party food suggestions, cake inspo, and more.
And if you know someone whose birthday happens to fall during the event (which might be another reason why you’re interested in throwing a party), why not grab one of our World Cup birthday cards.
What is the World Cup and when is it?
Only coming around once every four years, the FIFA World Cup is an international football competition which is currently played by 32 different senior men’s teams from across the globe. While it has typically taken place during the UK’s summer months, as it is being held in Qatar the 2022 World Cup is taking place from November 20th to December 18th.
World Cup party food ideas
With all the anticipation and adrenaline going on whilst watching a match, there’s certainly going to be some hungry mouths to feed. If you’re struggling to decide on what sort of food is best, here are our World Cup party food ideas:
National dishes
One for the pro chefs (or even if you just want to massively impress your guests), is tailoring your food choices so that it’s based on the cuisine from the countries playing during your party.
Think pasta and pizza for Italy, paella and tortilla for Spain, and bratwurst and pretzels for Germany – a quick Google of whatever country you’re interested in should return popular food and recipes you can give a go or items you can try find in your local supermarket.
Classic UK football stadium food
Your safest bet to put on a good spread and please any football fans at your party is sticking with the classics and going with UK football stadium grub. From cheeseburgers and hot dogs to chips and sausage rolls, even the laziest cook could sort this out.
World Cup cake ideas
Now, no true party is complete without a showstopping cake! After all, cake is the perfect dessert for sharing or you could even do cupcakes which require no slicing at all. In terms of some actual World Cup cake ideas, here are some that we’ve come up with:
- The most obvious option is to either make (or buy if you’re baking skills aren’t quite up to scratch) a spherical-shaped cake decorated to look like a football – or perhaps football cake pops for a smaller sweet treat.
- Any true star bakers might want to give recreating the World Cup trophy a go to really impress the guests, although you might be reluctant to cut into it if it looks that good.
- Similar to our idea about serving national dishes as your party food, you could make a dessert, cake or sweet treat from the countries that are playing. It also means everyone gets to try something they’d probably have never had otherwise.
World Cup drinking games
Often seen as being a big part of English football culture, there was just no way we couldn’t include some World Cup drinking games. Plus, it’s always a great way for everyone to have extra fun at your party. And don’t worry if there are people who’d rather not drink or any young ones in attendance, they can still get involved with their preferred non-alcoholic drink of choice.
Beer football
If you didn’t guess already, this is just another take on the classic drinking game – beer pong – with a bit of flip cup thrown in there too. This one is probably best played before or after the game, or even during half-time if you reckon you can speed through it.
Basically, two teams line stand side-by-side with a cup in front of them on a table. Like in beer pong the goal is to get your ball in the opposing team’s cup, and you can only move further down the team line once you have done so. The losing side has to drink from their cup as it goes down the line and the first team to finish their entire line of players!
Penalty!
Going around the room, each person picks either a yellow or red card from two piles of cards. Each card features a different penalty on them – red being harsher penalties than yellow (maybe think of it as being a bit like truth or dare). This does require a bit of prep beforehand so make sure to get creative with your penalty ideas.
Man of the match
Before the match begins, assign each person partaking their own player. Then throughout the match, each time that someone’s assigned player touches the ball they have to drink. A slight warning though, depending on what you’re drinking and how big of a gulp you’re taking this could get people drunk very quickly so do be careful and drink responsibly.
Another twist on this idea could be that you divide everyone playing in half and then give each group a team. Then each time that team takes a shot at scoring, they all have to drink. This is probably a better alternative if you’re concerned about people drinking too much.
World Cup party decorations
No party is complete without decorations as this is what truly creates an atmosphere over just watching a football game with other people. So, if you’re happy to do some extra shopping or crafting, here are our World Cup party decoration ideas:
- Blow up some black and white balloons, or actual football balloons would be even better!
- Hang some banners and bunting around the room which are either football-themed or feature all the different world flags.
- Football paper plates are ideal if you don’t want to ruin your nice dinnerware and can be thrown away afterwards.
- If you’re willing to put in an extra bit of effort then it might be fun to have colour-coded decorations for the different countries playing, to match their national flag.
Perhaps you’ve got a football-crazy child? Well, we’ve already got another whole blog on the perfect football party ideas for kids’ birthday parties. And if that’s not exactly what you feel like reading right now then we’ve also got all sorts of fun articles and ideas over on the thortful blog.
