Top team building experiences that defined 2025

The experiences offered companies practical ways to blend imagination, purpose, and meaningful professional interactions, while highlighting values such as sustainability and social responsibility. Each activity became an opportunity for discovery and growth, where enthusiasm and dedication emerged naturally.

Circular eco design challenges

One standout activity invites teams to become eco-design innovators. Participants work together, using recycled materials such as bottle tops, cans, tubes and bottles to create a unique object — perhaps a functional accessory or an artistic sculpture. Guided by eco-design experts, teams must ideate, prototype and build in concert, emphasising creative thinking and cooperation. At the end, a panel evaluates creations on aesthetics, functionality and originality.

This format resonates with 2025 trends that place sustainability at the centre of corporate events, as companies increasingly choose eco-focused challenges that reinforce environmental awareness while strengthening internal bonds.

Culinary team cooking adventures

Food-based team building also dominated 2025 calendars. In a typical team cooking event, colleagues become collaborators in kitchens transformed into creative arenas. Formats range from a “Total Menu” scenario — where each group is responsible for one course from starter through dessert — to bite-sized tasks such as preparing finger food, or the iconic Mistery Box challenge in which teams craft dishes from a surprise set of ingredients.

These culinary activities demand clear communication, timing and mutual support, and they tap into broader trends that see food as an accessible way to bring people together, encourage creativity and reinforce bonds across diverse teams.

Bike for children: teamwork with social impact

Socially oriented team building grew in popularity, particularly programmes that combine collaboration with meaningful outcomes. One example places teams in the role of bicycle builders. Under the supervision of experienced mechanics, employees assemble bicycles from scratch. Once complete, teams personalise the bikes with accessories like bells, baskets and bottle holders, and write a message that will be read by the child recipient.

At the activity’s end, the bicycles are donated to a selected children’s home, adding a tangible social impact to the day’s efforts. This type of activity dovetails with 2025’s focus on CSR-inspired events that align team building with community contribution and social value.

Murder mystery dinners

For those seeking intrigue and engagement in a different format, murder mystery dinners became highly requested in 2025. Teams are either given roles to play or supported by professional actors as they work together during a multi-course meal to decipher clues and solve the mystery unfolding around them.

Often organised in groups by table, the competitive yet collegial environment encourages participants to share insights, question assumptions and think collaboratively under pressure. Variants such as a mystery weekend held in evocative settings — for example a historic castle — amplify the experience, giving a dramatic edge to team building that complements more conventional daytime formats.

Alignment with broader trends

These formats reflect wider shifts across the corporate events landscape, strengthening skills, cohesion, and active participation with far greater depth and intention.

Another significant development is the integration of hybrid and technology-driven elements, including immersive VR and AR experiences that allow geographically distributed teams to maintain strong interaction even when meeting in person is not possible.

Wellbeing-focused and creative formats, from mindfulness sessions to artistic workshops, further expand the range of possibilities, ensuring activities can respond to diverse expectations, working styles, and preferences.

Companies increasingly design team building as an integral part of organisational rhythm. Through approaches like these, attention remains centred on meaningful participation and a clear sense of purpose, shaping everyday professional dynamics and relationships in lasting ways.