Make your next birthday party unique by playing a custom birthday photo bingo game that is perfect for celebrating the guest of honor in a really fun way! It’s so easy to make with the free templates we’ve made for you – all you have to do is add in your own photos!
Sponsored by: CVS. All opinions and ideas are honest and my own.
My husband and son share a birthday, which means that most years we focus on my son and not my husband. This year I thought it’d be fun to do something that was all about him and created a photo bingo game for his birthday party with all of my favorite photos of him!
It was so much fun to play with our family and explain where some of the photos were from, relive some of our favorite memories, and most of all – celebrate everything we all love about my husband!
This would also be really fun for any occasion where you just want to celebrate someone like a retirement party, anniversary with photos of the couple, and so on!
How to Make Photo Bingo Game
Making this photo bingo game was so easy! I created a template that you can download here and all you have to do is add your favorites images to the template to make the bingo cards.
1 – Make the Bingo Calling Banner
The first thing I did was choose all of the images that I wanted to use for our photo bingo game. I chose 42 different images because my husband turned 42 this year, but you can do any number of images you want.
Tip!
The photo bingo game that I made uses 42 images. If you use all of my templates, you’ll need 42 images for the game and the banner. If you want to adjust it, you can, you’ll just need to edit the Canva template to however many images you want to use.
Once I’d chosen my images, I put them a birthday banner template in Canva that’s 2’x6′. You can get the Canva template here – just choose the color you want, delete the others, and upload your images into it instead of mine.
Once I had my banner just like I wanted it in Canva, I downloaded it as a PNG file, and then uploaded it to the CVS website. They offer some fantastic same-day photo printing options including a 2’x6′ banner option that I used for this.
Choose the full photo banner option and choose whether you want the indoor or indoor/outdoor option – I just did indoor but I knew I was only using it for a short-time so didn’t need it to last outdoors.
Then click Create Now, upload your photo, add it to your project, then click review & buy to complete your purchase. I so impressed by how well it turned out! It was the perfect party decoration and bingo calling board!
2 – Print Your Calling Pictures
I specifically designed the bingo banner to work with 4×6 images because I thought it would be fun to use the banner as both decorations and my bingo calling card.
I just used the CVS same day photo print option to print out 4×6 photos of all of the images for the game. I’ll explain how we used them in the how to play section below! The photos turned out so high-quality that I already know I want to use them in frames in our house now that the bingo party is over!
3 – Make and Print Your Photo Bingo Cards
Last but definitely not least, you need to make your actual photo bingo cards. I made a 8.5×11 bingo card template that you can access here that matches the birthday bingo templates, or you can just make your own as well. You just need a 5×5 grid of images with a free space in the middle.
I knew we would have twelve people coming, so I made twelve different cards but you can make as many as you need – just duplicate the base bingo card, mix up which images go where, and repeat until you have as many cards you need.
Once you have all of the cards done, download the file as a PDF. Then upload your file to the CVS document printing section – also available as same day – and print your cards!
The bingo cards turned out so great, and it was so nice to be able to just pick up literally everything I needed for the game in one place!
How to play Photo Bingo
Photo bingo is played just like any other bingo game. Before everyone came over, we hung up the photo banner, put all of the 4×6 images in a gift bag, and put bingo cards and markers on the table!
Once we were ready to play, I had people come up and pick a random picture out of the gift bag, show it to the audience, then tape it to the photo banner as our calling card. Everyone loved getting to participate in the photo picking, and the kids especially loved matching the photo to the one on the banner!
They kept picking a photo and saying things like ooh it’s lobster Richie or ooh it’s baseball Richie. It did exactly what I wanted it to – celebrate all the things that make my husband who he is!
If someone had the matching photo on their card, they marked it off. The first person who got five in a row (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal) won the first bingo and chose a prize either from the kid’s prize table or the adults.
Once someone gets a bingo, you can either have them clear their cards and start over again or my recommendation and what we did, just keep choosing pictures and playing until everyone wins once. It was way more fun that way and everyone was able to see almost all the photos we chose!
You can either have it so that people can bingo multiple times until everyone bingos at least once or once you bingo, you just watch and help other people find the photos on their cards. It’s totally up to you and your group – we had some kids that went and jumped on the trampoline and some that stayed until the final picture was chosen!
Photo Bingo Prize Ideas
Since the idea was for this bingo game to be all about my husband, I thought it would be fun to grab prizes that were all inspired by things he loves or things that we love about him.
CVS has a huge supply of birthday gift bags and gift wrapping supplies, so I walked around the store after picking up my bingo game and grabbed a bunch of his favorites like a giant inflatable soccer ball, batteries with his favorite soccer star on them, his favorite type of chocolate bars, a back roller, a build your own cat activity, a stuffed cheetah because he loves cheetahs and more.
Honestly, this might’ve been my favorite part. It’s always fun to walk around a store and pick out things that remind you of someone. CVS had a ton of great options, so I had to be a little picky about what actually made it home with me because I could’ve bought an entire table full of prizes!
We put adult prizes in the birthday gift bags I grabbed from CVS to add a fun element of surprise but didn’t want the kids to be upset if they got something they didn’t want at all, so we just put those prizes out on the table on their own.
More Birthday Games
Want more things to do at your birthday party? These birthday party games go great with photo bingo!
- Double down dice game – see who can roll the dice without getting doubles, prizes involved!
- Musical gifts game – a fun way to give out prizes, kind of like pass the parcel, a classic Australian birthday game!
- Birthday bingo – a birthday themed version of the classic party game!
- Birthday scavenger hunt – clues leading the guest of honor to a fun surprise at the end!
- Surprise party games – perfect for a surprise birthday party!
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