How to Make Friends in a New Country Before You Move There
Most advice about moving abroad starts the day you land. You arrive, you unpack, and then you set about the slow work of finding people. That timing is part of why the first months feel so heavy. You step off the plane into a place where you know absolutely no one, and you try to build a social life from zero while also fighting jet lag, paperwork, a new currency, and a language that moves faster than your ears can follow.
There is a better window, and almost nobody uses it: the weeks and months before you go. You already know roughly where you are headed and roughly when. That lead time is the perfect runway for meeting a few people, getting comfortable with the language, and arriving with names in your phone instead of strangers all around. This guide is about that pre-move window, and how to spend it so your first week somewhere new feels less like a cliff edge.
Why a head start changes everything
Arriving somewhere with zero contacts is rough in a way that is hard to picture until you are inside it. The practical stress is real, though the social silence is what wears people down. There is no one to ask which neighbourhood is good, no one to grab a coffee with on a slow Sunday, no one who knew you before you got here. Loneliness lands fastest in exactly this gap, when your old circle is now in another time zone and your new circle does not exist yet. Plenty of people quietly count the early months abroad as the hardest stretch of the whole move, and the isolation, more than the logistics, is usually why.
A head start rearranges that. If you spend the pre-move window meeting even three or four people, you land with a few threads already in your hands. One of them might know a good flat. One might invite you to a thing on your second weekend. One might just be a familiar voice when everything else is foreign. None of that requires a finished friendship before you arrive. A warm acquaintance or two is enough to turn day one from a void into a soft landing, and it gives you a reason to leave the apartment in your first fragile week. The early loneliness does not vanish, though it has far less room to take hold when you are not starting from absolute scratch.
Where to find people before you move
The internet makes the pre-move window genuinely usable, because the people you want to meet are already gathered in findable places. A few worth working through:
- Expat and city communities online. Most cities have an active expat presence on Reddit, Facebook groups, and dedicated forums where newcomers ask questions and locals answer. Lurk first, then post a friendly introduction: where you are coming from, when you arrive, what you are into. People who have made the same move love helping the next person do it.
- Locals, not just other foreigners. It is tempting to cluster with people from home, and locals are the ones who turn a city into a place you actually belong. Language exchange apps, hobby groups, and interest-based communities let you meet residents who are happy to chat with someone moving to their town. They are also your best source of the unwritten stuff no guidebook covers.
- Other future arrivals. You are not the only one planning this move. University intake groups, company relocation cohorts, and "moving to [city] in [month]" threads are full of people on the exact same timeline. Friendships among new arrivals form fast, because everyone is equally unmoored and equally glad to find a teammate.
- Language partners. Anyone helping you practise the local language is also a person, and a recurring one. A weekly language exchange call is a low-stakes way to build a real relationship over the weeks before you leave, so by the time you land you already have someone who knows your story.
If you want a broader survey of tools for this, our roundups of the best apps to make friends abroad and the best apps to meet people when you move to a new city go deeper on specific platforms.
Building real rapport remotely
Meeting people online is the easy half. The harder half is making those first contacts feel like real connections rather than a list of usernames, so that meeting in person later is warm instead of stiff. Text alone rarely gets you there. You can message someone for weeks and still feel like strangers when you finally sit across a table, because typing strips out the tone, the laughter, and the little pauses that make a person feel like a person.
This is where voice does most of the work. A short call carries warmth that a chat thread cannot. You hear someone's sense of humour, the way they trail off, the things that make them light up, and that builds a sense of knowing each other far quicker. Aim to move a promising connection from text to a voice conversation reasonably early. It does not need to be long or formal. Twenty minutes of actually talking will tell you more about whether you click than a month of messages, and it means your first in-person meeting is a reunion rather than an introduction. By the time you land, a few of these people are voices you recognise, which changes the whole texture of arriving.
Practising the language by voice first
If you are moving somewhere that speaks a language you are still learning, the scariest part of day one is often the small stuff: ordering a coffee, asking for directions, understanding the cashier. You can study grammar for months and still freeze the first time a real person speaks to you at real speed, because reading and listening are different muscles from speaking out loud under a little pressure.
The fix is to start speaking before you go, with actual people, by voice. Even short, regular conversations in the local language do something an app drill cannot: they train your ear and your mouth at the same time, and they get you used to the ordinary friction of being understood and misunderstood. A language partner who chats with you for fifteen minutes a week will have you arriving able to handle the basics without your heart racing. It also stacks neatly with making friends, since the person you practise with is a relationship too. You get a friendlier first week and a less intimidating one, from the same handful of calls. Many people find that the culture, more than the language, is the harder adjustment, and our guide to culture shock when moving to a new country is worth a read alongside this.
Where Bubblic fits
The pre-move window asks for one specific thing: a way to actually talk to real people, by voice, before you ever arrive. That is what Bubblic does. It connects you by voice with real people for genuine, low-pressure conversation, and you can use it to start talking with people now, including people in or near your destination, so the place feels a little less foreign before you set foot in it.
Because it is voice-first, Bubblic is well suited to both jobs at once. You can build real rapport with someone you will meet later, hearing their voice instead of guessing at tone over text, and you can practise speaking the local language with actual people rather than rehearsing alone. It fits the small pockets of time the months before a move tend to leave you, a call on the commute, ten minutes before bed, no scheduling marathon required. By the time you land, talking to strangers in your new country is something you have already been doing, which takes a lot of the edge off the first week.
Arrive with names in your phone
You have a window most movers waste. Spend a little of it meeting people, talking by voice, and getting your mouth around the language, and you will step off the plane into a place that already holds a few friendly faces instead of none.
FAQ
How early should you start making friends before moving abroad?
As soon as you know your destination and a rough timeline, which is usually one to three months out. That gives you enough weeks to meet a few people, move some of those chats to voice, and let a couple of warm acquaintances form before you land. You do not need finished friendships, just a few familiar names and voices waiting for you. Even starting a few weeks before you fly is far better than arriving with nobody, so begin whenever you can rather than waiting for the perfect moment.
Is it weird to message people before you move?
Not at all, as long as you are friendly and clear about why you are reaching out. People in expat groups, language exchanges, and city communities are used to newcomers introducing themselves, and most are glad to help someone making the same move they once did. Keep your first message warm and specific: say where you are coming from, when you arrive, and what you are interested in. That reads as genuine rather than random, and it gives the other person an easy way to reply.
Should you meet locals or other expats first?
Both, for different reasons. Other expats and fellow new arrivals understand the disorientation you are feeling and tend to bond fast, which makes them a quick source of company in the early weeks. Locals give you something else entirely: the unwritten knowledge, the language practice, and the sense of actually belonging to the place rather than hovering above it. Aim for a mix. Leaning only on people from home can keep you in a bubble, while a few local connections root you in the city much faster.
How do you make friends in a country where you don't speak the language?
Start before you arrive by practising the language out loud with real people, even fifteen minutes a week, so the basics feel less terrifying on day one. Language exchange partners are friends and teachers at once, which gets you connection and practice from the same conversation. Lean on shared interests too, since hobbies, sports, and activities let you bond over doing rather than only talking. And use voice early, because hearing someone builds rapport much quicker than text and helps you both push past the language gap with a little patience and goodwill.