20 Fun St. Patrick’s Day Games and Activities

Celebrate the Irish holiday with fun ideas for the whole family.

Whether you're celebrating a quiet St. Patrick's Day at home or hosting a large party for friends, get everyone into the holiday spirit with a few fun activities. St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17th, and although it's associated with minty green milkshakes, ornery leprechauns, and corned beef and cabbage, it actually dates back hundreds of years. The holiday is based on the legend of an actual Irish man named Patrick—something you can include in your St. Patty's-themed trivia!

These festive St. Patrick's Day games and activities involve searching for treasure, solving puzzles, and eating delicious green treats. Prepare a day of fun for friends and family of all ages with our best game ideas. Try your luck at these fun party activities and you may just find the pot of gold at the end.

Related: 17 Fun Ways to Celebrate St. Patrick's Day This Year

St. Patrick's Day Party Game Ideas

Plan a leprechaun scavenger hunt: Set up an indoor or outdoor scavenger hunt following the trail of a leprechaun and leading to a pot of gold. Create clues in the form of riddles, hiding them around the house and some involving solving a puzzle or completing a St. Patty's-themed task, eventually guiding participants to a prize.

Host St. Patrick's Day trivia: Play a game of trivia to see how much everyone knows about the Irish holiday. Divide participants into teams and have them come up with a festive St. Patty's-themed team name. Get creative with a mix of questions about the history of March 17th, traditions associated with the holiday, and fun facts about four-leaf clovers.

Make a gold coin toss: Create a fun coin toss station with an assortment of rainbow-colored plastic bowls. Give each participant a handful of gold coins and have them take turns in a game of coin toss. The first player to land a coin in each of the six rainbow-colored bowls is the winner and gets to keep the chocolate money.

Play a rainbow dice game: Assign numbers from one to six to the colors of the rainbow, then go around in a circle and have players take turns rolling the dice. The goal is to collect every numbered color of the rainbow and whoever gets all six first wins.

Pin the hat on the leprechaun: Instead of pinning the tail on the donkey, give the popular party game an Irish twist and trade the donkey for a leprechaun and the tail for a hat. You'll need a large piece of poster board to draw the leprechaun on and a piece of cardstock to make his hat. Place a piece of tape on the back of the hat, then blindfold players and have them try to place the hat on the leprechaun's head.

Make your own St. Patrick's Day word game: Put together a Scattergories-inspired game for St. Patrick's Day that both adults and kids can play. For the letters, use holiday-themed words such as "shamrock" or "gold", then make a list of items each player will need to come up with for each letter.

Related: 5 St. Patrick's Day Charcuterie Boards Better Than a Pot of Gold

Fun St. Patrick's Day Activities

Decorate shamrock sugar cookies: No holiday is complete without delicious treats, and what better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than by baking a tray of shamrock-shaped sugar cookies. Make it into a fun activity for the whole family and whip up some green frosting to decorate the cookies, and bring out lots of rainbow-colored sprinkles and candy to finish off the sweet treats.

Make green milkshakes: Speaking of tasty St. Patrick's Day treats, instead of enjoying your cookies with milk, make green shamrock shakes that are creamy, minty, and oh-so delicious. Use green food coloring to give the drink its signature color and add holiday-themed straws for a festive touch.

Build leprechaun traps: Get creative and make leprechaun traps that are a festive St. Pat's Day version of the Elf on the Shelf. Set out the colorful handmade trap the night before March 17th and if there is treasure in the form of gold coins or other goodies in the trap the next morning, you know the leprechauns stopped by.

Make gold slime: Making slime might just be more fun than playing with it! In honor of the Irish holiday, make green slime and put a festive twist on it by adding gold sequins and glitter or rainbow-colored confetti.

Follow leprechaun footprints: Cut green leprechaun footprints out of cardstock and stick them down on the floor leading to treasure that's waiting to be discovered. Get creative with the green footprint trail, starting by the front door, going through hallways, up stairs, and into bedrooms and closets.

Related: 13 Fun St. Patrick’s Day Crafts

St. Patrick's Day Games for Kids

Play a gold coin hide-and-seek game: Put a St. Patrick's Day spin on a game of hide and seek and hide gold coins around the house. Set a time limit within which players need to find the coins and prepare an empty pot for the gold at the end of the game where each player can add their coins to see who the winner is.

Make a DIY matching game: Make your own matching game using a St. Patrick's Day theme and make small cards with images of a rainbow, leprechaun, shamrock, potato, green hat, and more. Make two of each then laminate the cards. Turn them all face-side down, mix them up, and have players take turns to find matching pairs until someone wins by collecting the highest number of matching cards.

Create a candy guessing game: Fill a large glass mason jar with green and white candies, making sure to count how many of each you pour in the jar. Then, go around and ask everyone how many pieces of green and white candy they think are in the jar. Whoever guesses closest to the correct numbers wins the whole jar.

Make a St. Patrick's Day word search: Create a custom word search with St. Patty's-related words. Make it as hard or as easy as you like depending on the age of the puzzle solvers and include at least 10 words that are synonymous with the holiday. Hide the words horizontally, vertically, and diagonally to challenge the players and decorate the word search with colorful images of leprechauns, hats, horseshoes, and shamrocks.

Play a themed 'I Spy' game: Play a St. Patrick's Day game of 'I Spy' and hide holiday-themed props around your house. Print out a list of the props on a piece of paper and give it to each player, then have them check off each item once they spy it.

Play pass the potato: You only need one simple item for this fun St. Patrick's Day game: A large potato. Have everyone sit in a circle and pass around the potato while music plays. Whoever is holding the potato when the music stops is out. Keep going until the last person left wins the game.

Create a charm-sorting game with marshmallow cereal: You'll need bowls, plastic spoons, and a box of leprechaun-themed marshmallow cereal for this potentially messy St. Patrick's game. Give each participant a bowl of cereal and a plastic spoon to separate the marshmallows from the cereal pieces. Instead of using their hands, have them put the spoon in their mouth and pick out the marshmallows that way. The first person to get all the colorful marshmallow pieces out wins the game!

Play St. Patty's tic-tac-toe: Make a game of St. Patty's-themed tic-tac-toe, replacing the traditional x's and o's with rainbows and gold coins. You can use rainbow-colored sour candy pieces for one and chocolate coins for the other, and the best part is, both are edible at the end of the game.

Play a green alphabet game: Since green is the holiday's signature color, use it as a theme for an alphabet game. Give each contestant a pen and paper and ask them to write letters of the alphabet down the left side of the sheet of paper. Set a time limit to see who can come up with the most green things that start with the letters from A to Z.

Related: 9 Irish Songs for St. Patrick's Day to Enliven Your Celebration

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