19 Jun Corporate Fun Day
Corporate Fun Day Ideas: 9 Activities That Actually Land
Nine ideas for your next company fun day, from a 28-year practitioner who's worked countless corporate days out and watched which formats land - and which fall flat.
If you've drawn the short straw of organising this year's company fun day, you'll know there's two ways it tends to go. Either you nailed it last year and the pressure's on to top yourself. Or Susan from accounts left such a lasting impression last time that the whole office is still quietly traumatised - never again.
Either way, you're here because you need fun day ideas that actually work. Real corporate event ideas - not the same lukewarm five every other planner pulls out. Fun corporate events that get people away from their desks, break down silos, and turn the company fun day into something staff actually talk about on Monday morning. I've spent 28 years performing at corporate fun days and corporate event days across the UK, in everything from backyard marquees to country house company fun day venues - and I've watched which formats land, and which die on their feet.
What follows is nine genuinely good corporate fun day ideas, packed with 50+ activities - from inflatables and giant garden games to outdoor team building and food trucks. I'm Chris - 28 years in, 200+ five-star reviews, ranked #1 UK magician on FreeIndex. If you already know you want close-up magic on the day and you'd rather skip the reading, head straight to my corporate magician packages. Otherwise, read on.
- 01Close-up magician (the most versatile pick)
- 02Inflatables and bouncy castles
- 03Giant garden games for instant icebreaking
- 04Traditional garden games and races
- 05Outdoor team-building events
- 06Stilt walkers for festival theme fun days
- 07Corporate treasure hunts
- 08Food trucks and corporate catering
- 09Outdoor team-building activities and adventure
- 10Corporate fun day FAQs
A close-up magician (you knew this was coming)
The most versatile entertainment you can book for a corporate fun day.
Look, this guy has got to put food on the table - so forgive me for starting with the most versatile idea of the lot. Joking aside, a close-up magician is genuinely the most flexible piece of corporate entertainment you can plug into a fun day. Most corporate entertainment days have one big problem: dead air, awkward gaps, people not knowing what to do with their hands. Close-up magic plugs straight into those moments. We can mix and mingle through the queue at the burger truck. Park up at a quiet table during a lunch break. Pull a small crowd of 8-10 people, blow their minds for a few minutes, then move on. Try doing that with a bouncy castle.
If you want something with extra kick, ask about my Close-Up Corner - a dedicated mini-show format where guests rotate through 8-12 minutes of close-up magic on their own terms. It's the closest thing to a stage show you can run at a fun day without hiring a stage. Good fun day entertainment ideas need flexibility, and the Corner gives you a fixed visual focal point that doesn't lock everyone in one spot.
And if you want more than just magic, I run team-building workshops with my colleague Nick - half problem-solving, half magic skills, all surprisingly cohesive. A half-day workshop in the morning pairs nicely with close-up magic in the afternoon for the bigger fun day format.
"After 28 years of corporate fun days, the truth is this: most entertainment fights for attention. Close-up magic is the only format I've seen consistently get it - and keep it."
What a corporate fun day actually looks like
Reviews are one thing. Watching the reactions is another. Here's a quick clip from a recent corporate fun day with the Close-Up Corner running, plus stilt walkers and jugglers in the mix - which is what's coming up across the next few sections.
If you want more, there's hundreds of clips on my Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Inflatables and bouncy castles
The classic crowd-pleaser. There's a reason these keep showing up at corporate family fun days.
Inflatables are the workhorse of any company fun day with families on the guest list. They occupy kids for hours, exhaust adults in 90 seconds flat, and create the kind of photo opportunities Marketing dreams about. For corporate family fun day ideas that genuinely cross every age group, you can't really beat them.
Five formats worth booking, all with their own flavour of chaos:
- Bungee Run - elastic-cord humiliation, perfect for the over-confident sales team.
- Rodeo Bull - the slow-motion fall everyone secretly hopes the boss will take.
- Joust - just an excuse to batter the CEO with a smile on your face.
- Surf Simulator - watch the interns who 'surf at weekends' get pummelled by a foam roller.
- Human Table Football - strapped in, can't move side to side, magnificent.
Giant garden games
Giant Jenga, giant Connect 4, giant chess. Idiot-proof, weather-tolerant, instantly understood.
If inflatables are the chaos, giant garden games are the chill cousins. Lower energy, lower commitment, but they pull people in just as effectively. Anyone who's organised corporate family day ideas will tell you the same thing - guests gravitate to these because there's zero pressure, zero rules to learn, zero embarrassment of not knowing how to play.
Giant Jenga is the queen. Stack 50+ wooden blocks waist-high, watch a senior manager line up his next move with the focus of a heart surgeon, then watch the whole tower collapse in slow motion. Genuinely brilliant for breaking the ice between departments who never normally talk.
Giant Connect 4, giant Chess, and giant Snakes & Ladders all work the same way - low-stakes, visually striking, easy to set up in any flat-ish patch of ground. Hire firms can deliver and collect, or you can buy a kit and reuse it across multiple events.
Traditional garden games and races
Sack races, egg-and-spoon, three-legged. The reason these never die is because they always work.
There's a generation of Brits who can hear "sack race" and instantly remember a primary school sports day. That nostalgia is a planning superpower. Traditional corporate family day games run on muscle memory - everyone already knows the rules, no briefing needed, kit costs about £30 from any sports shop.
The eight that consistently land at corporate fun days: Sack Races, Egg and Spoon, Three-Legged Race, Tug of War, Croquet (unexpectedly competitive once the wine's gone in), Boules / Pétanque, Rounders, and Ring Toss.
Cheap, weatherproof-ish, and they thread together into a half-hour mini-Olympics if you've got someone willing to draw up a tournament bracket. Corporate fun games don't need to be elaborate to work - they need to be familiar.
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Outdoor team-building events
If you want to dress your fun day up as personal development - and tell HR you ticked the L&D box at the same time - this is the section. Outdoor team-building isn't the boot camp it used to be. The decent operators have figured out a day of forced bonding doesn't actually bond anyone; what works is creative tasks, light competition, and a half-decent lunch.
- Scavenger Hunt - location-wide, team vs team, prize for first finish.
- Obstacle Course - inflatable plus physical mix, low-stakes, big laughs.
- Relay Races - egg-and-spoon escalated into a tournament bracket.
- Trust Falls - don't trust Steve as far as you could throw him.
- Escape Room - portable kits, indoor or marquee, 30-60 minute slots.
- Field Day Competitions - festival of mini-games, scoring board, lanyard medals.
- Boat Building - cardboard or barrel raft, often paired with the lake.
- Outdoor Cooking - team cook-off, ingredients box, judge's table.
- Paintball - higher-stakes, splits cleanly into competitive groups.
- Geocaching - GPS treasure hunt, location-wide, runs all day.
A team-building boot camp without the drill sergeants. The best day corporate events are barely "team building" at all.
Stilt walkers (yes, really)
Underrated. Wildly photogenic. Perfect for a festival theme company fun day.
Stilt walkers feel like they shouldn't work at a corporate event - and then they do. Eight feet tall, head-and-shoulders above the crowd, brilliantly costumed. They photograph well, they kill it on the post-event social roll, and they cost less than most people think.
Where they really come into their own: festival-themed company fun days. Anything with a circus aesthetic, pop-up venue, food truck setup, or open marquee field. They walk between the queues, pause for photos, hand out flyers if you want them to. Genuinely brilliant fun day entertainment ideas territory.
Two stilt walkers cost less than most live music acts and cover a lot more ground. Hire firms package them with jugglers and fire performers if you're going for the full festival vibe. (You can see one of mine briefly in the Short clip earlier.)
Corporate treasure hunts
Brilliant in the right setup. Useless in the wrong one.
Corporate fun day activities don't get more underrated than a well-run treasure hunt. The format is old as the hills, but it scales beautifully across guest counts (12 to 200), needs no special equipment, and naturally splits departments into rivalry groups.
The catch: treasure hunts are sensitive to format. Get the venue and time-window right, they're brilliant. Get them wrong, they die. Hire firms can run the whole thing for you - app-based clues, GPS tracking, prizes built in. Cheaper than most outdoor activities, and gives the day a continuous backbone alongside the static stuff.
Food trucks and corporate catering
Skip the dry sandwich platter. Bring trucks.
Honest opinion after 28 years of corporate fun days: catering is the make-or-break decision. Wedding-style sit-down? Dead. Cold buffet? Worse. Food trucks? Suddenly the day has a vibe.
Food trucks turn lunch into a destination. Guests queue, chat, pick. Multiple trucks side by side give people choice and create a festival atmosphere without trying. Most hire firms can deliver and run the whole setup; you just confirm headcount and dietary requirements.
The default. Always works. Premium patty, brioche bun, queue out the door.
Mexican street food, serves fast, vegetarian-friendly without thinking about it.
Pulled pork, brisket, slow-cooked since dawn. Show-stopper for big crowds.
Old-school 99s with a flake. Pure nostalgia, perfect mid-afternoon cool-down.
Don't dismiss this one. Half your office probably wants this option as default.
Bao buns, ramen, dumplings. Lighter than burgers, hugely popular with younger teams.
Real espresso. Takes the post-lunch slump away before it starts.
Healthy option that tastes like a treat. Worth the squeeze.
If lunch needs to be quick, light, and weather-proof, these run reliably.
Two trucks for under 80 guests. Three or more for anything bigger. Spread them out so queues don't bunch up at one corner of the field.
Outdoor team-building activities
When team-building stops feeling like team-building and starts feeling like a stag do.
If you want corporate fun day activities with serious adrenaline - the kind people remember decades later - this is the section. Ten options, all proven, all suitable for corporate experience days (and several here also make great birthday experience gifts if you're looking outside the corporate format).
- Soap Box Car Racing - Build, race, hilarity. Day-long format with a finished trophy at the end.
- Zip Lining - Across-canyon zip lines if you've got the venue. Pure adrenaline, repeat go-rounds.
- Archery Tag - Foam arrows, real bows, full-contact rules. No injuries (mostly).
- Raft Building - Cardboard, barrels, rope. Then race them across a lake. Surprisingly competitive.
- Mountain Biking - Off-road trails, guided, all skill levels welcome. Group rates kick in at 12.
- Rock Climbing - Indoor walls or outdoor crags, fully instructed, properly safe.
- Outdoor Laser Tag - Paintball without the bruises. Larger venue, longer rounds, full team formats.
- Firewalking - If you really want to commit. Genuine novelty value, lifetime story.
- Camping Retreat - Overnight, fire pits, stars. Closer to a real bond than 90% of forced ice-breakers.
- Paragliding - Tandem flights with instructor. Booked through specialist firms, weather-dependent.
Most of these book through specialist firms who handle insurance, kit, instructors, the lot. Group rates kick in at 12+ people. None of them are cheap, but for a milestone year, an anniversary, or any company fun day you actually want remembered - they pay for themselves in stories.
Corporate fun day FAQs
The questions every planner asks before pulling the trigger on a date.
01What is a corporate fun day?
A corporate fun day is a daytime company event built around activities, food, and entertainment - usually for staff and often their families too. It sits between a team-building day (which has structured learning goals) and a summer party (which is purely social). Most run 9am to 5pm and mix outdoor activities with food trucks, garden games, and roaming entertainment.
02How long should a corporate fun day be?
Most corporate fun days run 5 to 7 hours. Anything under 4 feels rushed - guests just arrive, queue at the burger truck, and have to leave. Anything over 8 hours and people start fading by mid-afternoon. The sweet spot is 10am to 4pm, or 11am to 5pm. A morning team-building workshop followed by an afternoon fun day is the classic 9-to-5 structure.
03What activities work for a corporate family fun day?
Family fun days live or die on activities that genuinely cross every age. The reliable trio: inflatables (kids burn energy, adults take photos), giant garden games like Jenga and Connect 4 (zero rules to learn), and food trucks (everyone eats, queue chats turn into conversations). Close-up magic also works precisely because it crosses ages - I've performed for 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds at the same family fun day, hours apart.
04How many guests can a corporate fun day handle?
Anywhere from 30 to 1,000+, depending on venue and budget. The concept scales; what changes is logistics. Under 80 guests works fine in a single field with one food truck and two or three activity zones. At 200+ you need multiple trucks (or queues become unmanageable), zones spread across the venue, and more entertainment running simultaneously. I've worked corporate fun days at both extremes - the format itself is robust.
05When is the best time of year for a company fun day?
In the UK, late May to early September is the window. June and July are peak - longest days, warmest weather, lowest no-show rates. September is statistically the most reliable month for actual sunshine. Avoid August: school holidays mean half your staff are away. Avoid winter unless you've got a fully indoor venue - guests in coats trying to play tug of war is grim.
06What's the difference between a corporate fun day and a team-building day?
Team-building days have a learning objective baked in - HR drives them, there are debrief sessions, sometimes a facilitator with a flipchart. Fun days are explicitly social, no agenda, no expected takeaway beyond "we had a good time". The two often pair well: half-day team-building in the morning, fun day from lunchtime onwards. Same staff, two different goals, doesn't feel like one long meeting.
07Do I need entertainment at a corporate fun day?
If you want guests to remember it, yes. Activities entertain themselves while people are doing them - but the queue at the burger truck doesn't, the lull between morning and lunch doesn't, and the post-lunch dip definitely doesn't. Roaming entertainers (close-up magicians, stilt walkers, jugglers) plug those gaps. They're the difference between a day people enjoyed in the moment and a day people talk about on Monday morning.
08What's the best venue for a company fun day?
Outdoor, with grass, parking, and a wet-weather Plan B (a marquee or barn). Country house grounds, sports club pitches, country parks, large rural pubs with paddocks - all work well. Pure indoor venues struggle because the format wants space and movement. If you're locked indoors (city centre, no outdoor space), pivot to a different event format - the fun day concept doesn't really translate to a hotel ballroom.
09How do I organise a corporate fun day from scratch?
Six-step working order: (1) Confirm date and headcount with HR or leadership. (2) Lock the venue - book 4-6 months out for summer dates. (3) Set the budget per head; this is your biggest planning lever. (4) Pick 3-4 activity types from the list above, mixing high-energy with low-energy. (5) Book catering - food trucks usually need 4-8 weeks lead time. (6) Add roaming entertainment last; that's where the day lifts from "organised" to "memorable". Build a run sheet with arrival, lunch slot, key activities, and finish time. That's the whole of fun day management, really - it's not complicated, it just needs someone to own each step.
10What goes wrong at corporate fun days, and how do I avoid it?
Five classic failures, in rough order of frequency: (1) Bad weather, no Plan B - always book a marquee or covered space, even in July. (2) Queues bunch at one food truck - spread trucks across the venue. (3) Staff don't know the schedule - print or send a run sheet the day before. (4) The post-lunch energy dip kills the second half - that's exactly where roaming entertainment earns its money. (5) Kids running off and parents stressed - have a designated kids' zone with inflatables and supervisor cover. None of these are unfixable, but all of them are avoidable with one extra hour of planning.
The best corporate days out ideas don't have to be elaborate to land. Pick three or four formats from this list, mix high-energy with chill, get the catering right, and add roaming entertainment. That's fun day management in a nutshell - the rest is just confidence.
