DISPATCHES · APP UPDATES · 30 September 2026

Tinder launches Group Hangouts, letting friendship groups match with each other

After Double Date proved popular with under-30s, Tinder is scaling the idea up to whole friendship groups, with a shared chat and a plan to meet offline.

By The On Dating Journal Editors Published 30 September 2026Updated 19 October 20264 min read

Silhouetted hands forming a heart around the setting sun

The inspiration, in part, was a volleyball team. Claire Watanabe, Tinder’s vice-president of product management, told TechCrunch that the company took a cue from “a college women’s volleyball team” whose players made a shared Tinder profile while travelling for away games, to explore new towns and meet locals.

Tinder has now built that workaround into the app. On 30 September 2026, it launched Group Hangouts, a feature that lets groups of friends discover and match with other groups.

How Tinder’s group matching works

The mechanics are simple. One person starts a group, picks an activity and invites at least two friends. Once the group has three or more members, its profile appears in Tinder’s main card stack, where other groups can find it. According to TechCrunch, a group can hold up to 15 people.

Groups then like one another. When both sides have liked each other, a shared group chat opens, and the job from there is to agree a plan and get everyone into the same room. In practice, Watanabe said, “most people are hanging out with their close circle of friends”, so the groups tend to stay small rather than ballooning into parties.

Group Hangouts sits at the top of the home screen where it is available. It is rolling out in phases, starting in the US and selected markets, with more to follow; Tinder has not given a UK date.

Safety settings for group dates

Every participant needs their own Tinder account and profile, and nobody can be added to a group without choosing to join. Members can leave a group conversation without leaving their friendship group, and can block or report anyone who makes them uncomfortable. Tinder says its community guidelines, moderation systems and safety tools apply, including its Face Check verification where available. Recommendations follow each person’s existing discovery preferences.

From Double Date to groups: the numbers behind the bet

Group Hangouts extends Double Date, which Tinder introduced in June 2025 to let users pair up with a friend and browse other pairs. Tinder’s own testing data, published alongside the launch, is the case for going bigger. The company says 90% of Double Date users were under 30, that women were nearly three times more likely to like a paired profile than a solo one, and that Double Date matches exchanged 35% more messages.

For Group Hangouts specifically, Tinder says 40% of invitations were accepted during testing in Australia, and that women were 2.2 times more likely to like a group profile than a one-to-one profile. These are internal figures, not independent research, but they explain why the company is leaning in.

“We think it’s going to be one of the most fun things we’ve ever built on Tinder,” said Mark Kantor, Tinder’s chief product officer.

Part of Tinder’s push towards real-life dating

Group Hangouts is the latest step in a year-long shift away from endless one-to-one swiping. In July, Tinder expanded its Events tab, which surfaces local activities such as ceramics classes, group hikes and game nights, from Los Angeles to cities including New York, Berlin and Zurich. Kantor described Events at the time as “one of the clearest signals of where dating is heading.”

The commercial pressure is plain. TechCrunch notes that Tinder’s monthly active users fell 7% in the second quarter. Rivals are heading the same way: Bumble’s chief executive, Whitney Wolfe Herd, told investors in August that group socialising is “a real part of how Gen Z prefers to meet”, as Bumble tested its own small-group product, Plans.

Whether friendship groups want their nights out brokered by a dating app is the open question. The pitch, at least, is lower stakes than a first date across a candlelit table: a shared activity, a few friends on either side and an easy exit. For how the core app compares, see our Tinder review, and for the generational shift driving all this, our Gen Z dating research.