Winter Olympic Themed Party Games

Celebrate the upcoming Winter Olympic Games with these great Olympic themed party games! They’re fun for all ages, themed after the most popular Winter Olympic events, and use things you can most likely find in your house! They’re perfect for any type of opening night watch party or just to get people excited for the two week worldwide celebration! 

Winter Olympic Party Games

I can thank my dad for my love of the Olympics. He’s had a healthy obsession with the Olympics for as long as I can remember. We even went on a big family trip and skipped a week of school my senior year of high school so we could actually go to some of the events at the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002! It was one of the coolest experiences ever, and I’ve been a bit obsessed with the Olympics as well since then!

We’ve done a set of family Olympic games almost every year I can remember with different themes, like our candy cane olympics, Easter egg olympics, and conversation heart Olympics!

With the Milano Winter Olympics coming up next month, I thought it was only fair to put together some awesome Winter Olympic Themed Party games as well based on some of the most popular Winter Olympic sports.

Many of these games are Minute to Win It style Olympic themed party games, meaning they’re designed to be played by quickly and easily. You can play them in one of three ways:

• Individuals – have everyone play the games either at the same time or one after another (depending on the game) and the best score wins!
• Head to head – have two people play against each other at once, the best person wins. Do it like a tournament and keep going until you have just one winner!
• Team – split your group into teams and choose an individual from each team to compete in each of the events! Keep score and choose winning teams at the end!

I’ve put together step by step instructions for each of these games below. If you have questions about something or need clarification, just leave me a comment, and I’ll do my best to answer. And if you happen to play these games and take a picture of video, I’d love to see it and share! I love it when people use my games!

Snow Board

Give each player a fake snowball and a cutting board. Place a bucket, trash can, or other container of some sort at the opposite end of the room. Players must bounce the snowball on their cutting board from one side of the room to the other and get it to drop in the bucket.

If they drop it on their way to the other side of the room, they have to pick it up and go back to the starting line. If they stop bouncing the snowball and just let it sit on their cutting board, same thing – go back to start.

First player to successfully get the snowball from one side of the room and into the bucket on the other side by bouncing it on their cutting board wins.

Cross Country Skiing

Cover a table in maps or map tablecloth like this that shows the different continents. On one side of the table, place a package of Oreos and have the first player stand on the end of the table. Or skip the tablecloth and just tape placeholders for each of the continents on a table.

To play, players must slide the Oreos from the end of the table across the map and get them to land in each of the continents. The Oreo must stop inside the continent to count, anything on the line will have to be “skied” again.

First player to successfully get one Oreo in each of the continents wins. If you’re playing with multiple teams at once, use Oreos with different fillings.

Ski Jump

Place a bucket or box on one side of a table and place a bucket of ping pong balls on the other side of the table. In the middle, create a small ramp using a box + piece of poster board or whatever else you have at home that will allow you to create a ski ramp. Make sure it is stable though so when people are rolling ping pong balls up the ramp, the ramp doesn’t collapse.

To play, players must roll ping pong balls over the ramp and try to get it to land in the bucket at the other side of the table. If you don’t have a table that will be long enough for this, you could also set the game up on the ground.

First player to land three ping pong balls in the bucket wins. If you’re playing with multiple players at once, use different color ping pong balls to keep track of whose ping pong ball is whose.

Slalom Skiing

Use painters tape to create a skiing course on the ground, making sure to make it go back and forth like a slalom course. Make skis using cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil.

To play, have players stand on the cardboard skis and move from the beginning to the back of the course. Time them from the start to finish and the winner is the one with the fastest time!

Skeleton

Cut up a paper skeleton and spread it out on the ground around a large room. Here’s a big skeleton template you could print.

To play, players must lay on their stomachs on a large bath towel and slide around on the ground to collect the pieces of the skeleton around the room. Once they’ve collected all pieces of the skeleton, they can get off of their towel and stand up to put their skeleton together on the ground.

First player to successfully gather all pieces of their skeleton and put it together wins.

Speed Skating

Place plastic traffic cones in a circle around a room and give each player two kitchen towels.

To play, players must start at one end of the circle and using the kitchen towels, skate around the plastic cone circle, going in between each and every plastic cone.

First player to get around the circle skating wins. If they miss any of the cones, they have to go back and go through the cone they missed.

Ice Hockey

Set up a goal on one side of a table using an empty tissue box that has the middle flap ripped out. Either tape the box to the table or weight it down with something so it won’t move. If you don’t have a tissue box, you could use something else but make sure it’s fairly small so it’s not too easy.

Give each player a chopstick and a cup full of ice cubes and have them stand at the table opposite the tissue box goal. To play, players must put the chopstick in their mouth and use the chopstick (still in their mouth) to get a piece of ice from one side of the table into the goal at the other end.

First player to score a goal with their ice cube wins.

Snowman Knock Down

Set up a stack of white cups with snowman faces drawn on them (or just use these pre-drawn ones). Then set up a container with cotton balls.

To play, set a timer and let players throw cotton balls, one at a time, trying to knock down the tower of snowmen. The person who knocks them all down first wins!

Mini Biathlon

Just like the Biathlon event, this is a two part game that players have to finish both parts to win. Set up a bucket of mini marshmallows on one side of a table along with a plastic straw. On the other side of the table, use washi tape or painter’s tape to tape a “finish line,” about six inches from the end of the table.

About six feet from the end of the table with the tape, set up another box or bucket with a pretty wide opening (a smaller opening will work, it’ll just make this game a lot harder).

To play, players must use their straw to suck up a mini marshmallow and place it on the table. They then have to blow the marshmallow all the way across the taped line on the other side of the table and get it to land between the tape and the end of the table. They can do either big blows or just small little blows and move along with the marshmallow, whatever works best for them.

Once they’ve gotten the marshmallow across the line (and still on the table), they have to suck up the marshmallow again and shoot it from the end of the table and try to get it to land in the bucket six feet away. If they miss, they have to start over and keep going through the two-part process until they make one in the bucket.

Alternately, you could just have them go through the process five times and for any they make in the bucket, they could get five seconds taken off their time.

Curling

Tape a square or a rectangle on one side of a room. On the other side, place a bucket full of cheap plastic bracelets (or use leftover Oreos from the cross-country skiing game above).

To play, players must sit on one side of the room and slide the bracelets to the other side of the room, trying to get them to land on the edges of the box. If they land outside of the box or inside of the box, they don’t count.

First player to land a bracelet on all four sides of the square wins.

If you want even more winter themed games, try any of these ones from our other winter and Christmas olympic games!

• Candy cane games – tons of games using only candy canes!
• Nutcracker games – tons of races, relays, and more with a nutcracker theme!
• Reindeer games – the kind of games Rudolph and his friends would’ve played!
• 12 days of Christmas games – 12 games you could use for a Christmas Olympics!
• Christmas games – an entire set of Christmas minute to win it games that all have wintery themes!