College Fest Event Ideas: Fun and Easy - 2023

Updated: We have updated our list of college fest event ideas with 21 fresh new ideas that you can easily organize in your college. Pick up your favorite idea and let us know if you’d want any help in organising.

Each event is accompanied by possible event names and their taglines. I hope you will like them.

1. Battle of the Bands: Invite bands from the local community and even other colleges to compete. This is a great way to provide entertainment and showcase talent.

   • Rhythm Rumble: Your tune, your battle

   • Sonic Showdown: Brace for the musical storm

   • Harmony Clash: Unleash the power of your band

2. Tech Hackathon: Organize a 24-hour coding event where students can form teams and solve programming challenges. You can invite local tech companies to judge and possibly offer internships.

   • Code Crusade: Battle of the coders

   • Hack Infinity: Where ideas meet execution

   • Tech Titans: Unleash your inner innovator

3. Film Festival: Have a day dedicated to showcasing student films. This can be open to all majors, not just film students.

   • Cinematic Symphony: A feast for the eyes and soul

   • Reel Revelry: Discover the stories untold

   • Frame Fantasia: Lights, camera, action!

4. Cultural Fair: Encourage student groups to set up booths and share their culture's food, art, music, and traditions. This is an engaging way to learn about diverse cultures.

   • Cultural Kaleidoscope: Embrace the diversity

   • Global Gala: Celebrate the world in a day

   • Heritage Harmony: United colors of our campus

5. Charity Run: Organize a 5K run to raise funds for a local charity. It promotes health, community involvement, and philanthropy.

   • Philanthropy Footrace: Run for a reason

   • Charity Chase: Every step matters

   • Giving Gallop: Sprint for a cause

6. Sustainability Drive: Organize events that promote sustainable practices like a trash pickup day, tree planting, or a seminar on sustainable living.

   • Eco Endeavor: Our planet, our responsibility

   • Green Genesis: Step towards a sustainable future

   • Conservation Crusade: Because every action counts

7. Spoken Word Night: A night dedicated to poetry and spoken word can be a great platform for students to express their feelings and ideas.

   • Prose & Poetry: Speak the unspeakable

   • Verse Vortex: Dive into the whirlpool of words

   • Rhetoric Rhapsody: Celebrate the power of words

8. Virtual Reality Experience: If you have access to VR equipment, you can set up a VR experience booth. This can be educational, like a virtual trip to a museum, or purely fun, like VR games.

   • Reality Rupture: Break the boundary of real

   • Illusion Immersion: Dive into a different dimension

   • Virtu-verse: Exploring realities, one headset at a time

9. Ted-Style Talks: Invite students or local experts to give brief, inspirational speeches on topics they're passionate about.

   • Pulse Points: Ideas worth sharing

   • Inspire Ignite: Sparking conversations that matter

   • Thought Theatrics: Stage of intellect and inspiration

10. Science Fair: A traditional science fair where students can showcase their research and projects. This is not just for science majors; you could encourage cross-disciplinary projects.

    • Innovation Ignition: Fueling the science spirit

    • Quantum Quest: Unveiling the mysteries of science

    • Fusion Fair: Where science meets creativity

11. Stand-Up Comedy Night: Encourage students with a knack for humor to perform. You could also invite local comedians to perform or judge.

    • Laugh Labyrinth: Navigate the maze of mirth

    • Giggle Gala: Hilarity hits the campus

    • Comedy Carnival: Where laughter is the only language

12. Art Exhibit: Showcase student artwork in a gallery setting. You could have categories like painting, sculpture, digital art, etc.

    • Canvas Confluence: A splash of creativity

    • Palette Panorama: Broaden your artistic horizons

    • Masterpiece Mosaic: Unveiling the art within

13. Talent Show: Give students a platform to show off their unique talents, whether it's juggling, magic tricks, dancing, etc.

    • Skill Spectacle: Showcasing the stars of tomorrow

    • Talent Triumph: Where passion meets performance

    • Starlight Stage: Spotlight on your talents

14. Cook-off: A culinary competition where students make their best dishes. This could have categories like best vegan dish, best dessert, etc.

    • Gourmet Games: The culinary battleground

    • Sauce Showdown: Taste that makes a difference

    • Flavor Frenzy: A battle of taste and creativity

15. Fashion Show: Organize a fashion show featuring student designers. This could also showcase sustainable or thrifted fashion.

    • Style Spectra: Walk the ramp of creativity

    • Vogue Verve: Celebrating style and sustainability

    • Chic Chase: Chase the trend, set the style

16. Improv Workshop: A workshop where students can learn and practice improv. This is a fun way to learn acting and think on your feet.

    • Spontaneity Spree: Think fast, act faster

    • Wit Workshop: Create magic in the moment

    • Improv Invasion: Unleash the power of the unexpected

17. Mural Painting: Designate a wall on campus where students can collaboratively paint a mural. This could be a regular event where the mural is painted over each year.

    • Color Commune: Brush strokes of unity

    • Palette Parade: Painting our story, one mural at a time

    • Artistic Alliance: Come, color our campus

18. Sports Tournament: Organize a sports tournament with popular games like soccer, basketball, or even frisbee. You could also try less common games like Quidditch!

    • Athletic Apex: Champions in the making

    • Sporting Spectrum: Celebrate the spirit of sport

    • Game Galore: Where rivalry meets camaraderie

19. Escape Room Challenge: Set up an escape room on campus. This can be a fun team-building exercise that encourages problem-solving skills.

    • Puzzle Pursuit: Beat the clock, crack the code

    • Riddle Rumble: Solve, escape, survive

    • Mystery Maze: Venture into the unknown

20. Debate Tournament: Organize a debate on current events or philosophical questions. This can be a formal or informal event and encourages critical thinking skills.

    • Dialogue Duel: Power up the podium

    • Persuasion Pitch: Arguments in action

    • Rhetoric Rumble: Battle of viewpoints

21. Dungeons & Dragons Night: Host a D&D night for students interested in tabletop role-playing games. This can be a one-time event or the start of a regular club.

    • Fantasy Fable: Unravel the mysteries within

    • Role-play Rendezvous: Become the hero of your story

    • Dice Decree: Where each roll decides your fate

We will keep updating this page as more ideas pour-in.

Old Event Ideas Archive (Original)

College fests can have the following events in their campus -

Paintball

A game where players (in teams) compete to eliminate opponents by shooting them with guns that throw water-soluble dye balls. Build a maze in the college ground with materials from a local exhibition centre. That should give you minimum 5 hours of total fun!

Mimic a Music Band

All colleges have great musicians and freshers bands. Instead of a normal rock-on like jamming competition, you can have all the participating bands mimic a popular mainstream band of their choice. The one who is closest in mimicking (Everything from clothes, hairdos, equipment, style of performance etc.) should win!

Mock CID (Way better than a treasure hunt!)

Create an interesting on-campus murder story. Have multiple participating teams. Leave clues tracing back to the murder on the campus. The clues should lead to witnesses (volunteers should be asked to role play) and the one who finds out the real murderer first wins!

You can have a back story and leave clues all around the campus, along with dummies acting as dead bodies, and have some volunteers act as witnesses.

Ice Cream Sticks Modelling

For both individual and group entries. Give only ice cream sticks and glue (you can add thread or match sticks or newspaper also) as material.

Give an elaborate task. The participants are supposed to use the sticks to build a structure that should achieve the goal.

For instance: Build a bridge that holds a standard size mobile phone for at least one whole minute. Or Build a boat out of the matchsticks that will take a mobile phone from one edge of a water body to another.

Mad Ads

Though this is a fairly common event, you can add a twist, by first creating totally fake products that are really hard to sell. Like a "smart helmet" or something really dull. Ask them to write the script for the ad, enact it on camera, create a 2-3 minute full fledged ad. Show it on a big projector before ranking them.

Impromptu Poetry Contest

Medium/Language No Bar! Ask the contestants to come on stage one by one. Give them a topic and 1 minute to think. They recite their poem in a language comfortable to everyone (English, Hindi or any regional language). The one that generates the biggest applause + judge's ranking wins!

Marketing (Convince an innovative idea)

Participate in teams. Give a product/service as the starting point to all the teams participating.

Their job is to go to a real-life shop-owner/mall and convince the one at the counter to use that service or own that product.

One of the team member has to record the entire conversation and send the video as an entry. The team that is the most successful in convincing a third party wins! They way they do it has marks too!

Wordsworth

The literary club in the college can host this contest in the library. Have all participants come with a paper and display one big word on the screen at a time.

Participants have 60 seconds to write as many small words from the one big word as possible in those 60 seconds. Repeat for at least 5 rounds. The one with highest word count of legitimate words (with letters only from the one big word) wins!

Quiz Contest (about some really out-of-the-box theme)

We know that quiz contests are generally about - Movies, Technology, Books, Management, Startups, Computers etc.

Pick a completely new theme. Say, about your "city" and design all the questions exclusive to the place.

Personality Contest with a Twist

Instead of awarding Mr. & Ms. <so so> of the College every year with the same rounds, make the participants do something really different.

Do not keep it as a simple fashion show, where the winner is only the one who wears nice clothes and has a nice build.

For instance, make them do a village round and come up with an innovative solution to real-life problem and implement a prototype (record the whole thing on camera).

Ask them tough rapid-fire questions.

Ask them to do a very strange thing in front of a crowd or make them talk to strangers for selling candy or toothpaste. Ask them to build something on stage. Perform some kind of art on stage etc.

Pick the one who scores very highly on every round.

Cosplay for Famous Inventors/Scientists/World Leaders

Ask everyone to come dressed as a famous inventor or scientist or a world leader. The one who's costume matches the most wins!

Best Electrical/Mechanical/CS/IT/Civil Engineer Contest

Create a on-stage game for a particular branch. The one who claims to know the most about his/her branch can become the participant.

Ask them questions with audio-video clues in a quiz-style fashion, the one who answers questions related to curriculum the fastest wins!

Hoping to add more ideas here! If you have any, please put up yours in replies below.