How to Run a Pub Quiz People Come Back For

A good pub quiz turns a dead Tuesday into the busiest night of the week. A bad one empties the place by round three. The difference is rarely the questions; it’s the pace, the fairness and whether people feel they had a chance.

A format that works

Six rounds of ten, with a picture round handed out at the start and collected at the break, runs about ninety minutes. That’s long enough to justify the entry fee and short enough to finish before last orders.

A classic running order:

1. General knowledge to warm the room up
2. Music
3. Sport
4. Film and TV
5. Picture round (collected at the break)
6. A final round worth double points

Our free pub quiz questions follow this pattern, if you want to see how it reads out loud.

Keep it fair

• One phone out, no points for that round. Say it at the start and mean it.
• Read each question twice, then give thirty seconds.
• Swap sheets for marking. Faster for you, and the arguments are between teams, not with you.
• Accept reasonable answers. Decide in advance whether spelling matters (it usually shouldn’t).

Keep them coming back

Run the scores after every round and read out the top three. A close leaderboard keeps tables in their seats for another drink. Rotate question writers or sources so nobody can predict the answers, and never repeat a question within a year: regulars remember.

A small entry fee (£1–£2 a head) with the pot going to the winning team works well, with a jackpot question that rolls over if nobody gets it.

The legal bit

If you charge entry, make sure the quiz you’re using is licensed for commercial use. Most free quizzes online aren’t, and questions lifted from TV quiz shows can land you in hot water.

Save the prep

Writing sixty fresh questions every week is a job in itself. The Complete Pub Quiz is sixty new questions with a picture round, a host pack, team answer sheets and a tie-breaker, licensed for your venue. The free pub quiz page is the free version: questions and answers only.