40 long distance date ideas that are not just a video call

Cook together

Most long distance relationship date ideas start in the kitchen for a reason: cooking gives your hands something to do while you talk, and dinner is still dinner.

• Cook the same recipe on a call. Pick one dish, shop separately, prop your phones by the hob and cook in step. Needs a shared recipe and a phone stand. About 90 minutes. You each get to be head chef, and nobody hovers over the pan.
• Mystery basket. Name three ingredients the other has to use, then both improvise dinner on camera. Needs a stocked cupboard and some nerve. About an hour. The constraints do the entertaining, and neither of you has to eat the other's experiment.
• Breakfast for one, dinner for the other. Sit down at the same moment across the time gap, one with coffee, one with wine. Needs a meal you will happily eat at an odd hour. About 40 minutes. It makes the time difference the point.
• Bake and post. Bake the same biscuits, post a tin to each other and compare on arrival. Needs a recipe, a tin and a padded envelope. Two hours, then a few days of waiting. The wait is part of it, and the parcel proves you both did it.
• Cocktail or mocktail hour. Pick a drink neither of you has made and mix it together on video. Needs a recipe, ice and a decent glass. About 30 minutes. A drink is a small ritual, and small rituals survive distance well.
• Order each other dinner. Send a takeaway to their door as a surprise and eat at the same time on a call. Needs their address and a rough idea of when they are home. About an hour. It is the nearest thing to picking up the bill.

Watch together

Watching the same thing at the same time is the oldest remote date there is. These versions give you something to say afterwards.

• Synced film night. Count down from three and press play together. Needs the same film available to both and snacks. Two hours. Reacting to the same moment at the same second is most of what a cinema trip is.
• Trailer roulette. Watch five trailers, score each out of ten in private, then reveal and crown next week's film. Needs a call and a notes app. About 30 minutes. Choosing becomes the date, so the film itself can be terrible and the night still counts.
• Commentary track. Rewatch a film you both know well and talk over it from start to finish. Needs a film you have seen twice and no guilt about pausing. Two hours. Distance removes the shushing.
• Documentary and debrief. Watch the same documentary separately during the week, then hold a twenty-minute call to argue about it. Needs the documentary and a calendar reminder. An hour, then twenty minutes. It suits couples whose evenings never line up.
• Their childhood favourite. Name a film you loved at ten, and the other watches it without complaint. Needs two films and an open mind. Two hours each, on separate nights. What someone loved at ten tells you more than their current top five.

Play together: virtual date ideas for long distance couples

A game gives a call a shape: a start, a middle and a winner.

• Escape room on two phones. Five puzzles against the clock, and each phone shows half the clues, so you have to describe what you see. Needs two phones and a call. Around half an hour. You cannot lean over and look at their screen, which is why you talk more.
• Codenames for two. One of you is spymaster and sees the key, the other sees eighteen face-down cards. Give one-word clues with a number and find your seven agents before the dummy team, which uncovers one word a turn, finds its six; one card is the assassin. Needs two phones and a turn clock. About 20 minutes. It tests how well you predict each other's associations.
• Wordle race at lunch. Same five-letter word for both, six guesses each, boards hidden until you have both finished, fewer guesses wins. Needs two phones. Ten minutes. It fits a lunch break in either time zone and gives you something to gloat about at dinner.
• Connect 4 across a day. Start a room and take one move whenever you have a minute, finishing by bedtime. Needs two phones. A whole day, in thirty-second pieces. A move waiting for you is a small hello, and the leaderboard remembers who won.
• Co-op video game night. Pick a game you both own, put on headsets and play for a set time. Needs the same game on compatible platforms. Two hours. A shared objective makes a call feel like doing something together.
• Write each other a pub quiz. Ten questions each on things you know the other cares about, then swap, answer and mark. Needs pen, paper and a call. About 45 minutes. Writing the questions is its own kind of attention.
• Sketch and guess. Draw something from your week, badly, in sixty seconds, and hold it up to the camera for the other to guess. Needs paper, a pen and a timer. About 20 minutes. Bad drawings are funnier over video, where nobody can grab the pen.
• Close-up photo guessing. Photograph something in your home from very close, send it, and the other guesses what it is. Needs two phones. Fifteen minutes. You end up knowing the corners of a flat you are not standing in.

Make something

Making a thing leaves a record. Weeks later the object is still there, and so is the evening.

• Paint the same picture. Pick one photo you both love, buy cheap paints and paint it on a call. Needs paper, paints and a jar of water. About 90 minutes. Two versions of the same view make good fridge decorations and a better metaphor.
• Playlists with liner notes. Build a ten-song playlist for the other and write one line per song saying why. Needs a streaming service. An hour to make, an hour to listen. It is a mixtape, and mixtapes were always a long distance format.
• Story ping-pong. A ridiculous opening line, then one sentence each until the story hits ten lines; finished stories stay in the room. Needs two phones and no editor. Fifteen minutes live, or a day between meetings. Turn-based, so the story carries on while one of you sleeps.
• Learn the same small skill. Follow one free video tutorial together, a knot, a card trick or twenty words of a language one of you grew up speaking. Needs the tutorial and its props. About an hour. Being equally bad at something new is a great leveller.
• Shared photo book. Each of you picks twenty photos from your time together, then lay them out on a call. Needs a shared folder and a photo book service. About two hours. Choosing what to keep is a conversation about what mattered, best had out loud.

Go somewhere in parallel

You cannot go to the same place, but you can both go somewhere at the same time and describe it.

• Walk and talk. Go for a walk in your own neighbourhood on a call, describing what you pass. Needs headphones and a coat. About 45 minutes. Walking side by side is easier talking than sitting face to face, even when the sides are in different cities.
• Same chain, different branch. Order the same drink at the same coffee chain and sit by the window on a call. Needs a chain you both have nearby. About an hour. The matching cup is silly and it works: sameness makes the distance feel smaller.
• Two sunsets. Watch your own sunset and send a photo, then compare when the second one comes round. Needs a west-facing window or a short walk. Ten minutes each. Two sunsets a few hours apart is a reminder that the day travels between you.
• Gallery visit, split. One of you goes to a local gallery while the other browses the same collection online. Needs a gallery with a good online collection. About 90 minutes. Describing a painting to someone who can only see a thumbnail is oddly intimate.
• Grocery shop together. Do your weekly shop at the same time on a call, comparing baskets. Needs a trolley and a hands-free phone. About 45 minutes. Chores done together stop being chores and start being the kind of boring you miss.
• Street-view tour of your hometowns. Walk the other through your childhood streets on a mapping app, pointing out the corner shop and the school gates. Needs a shared screen. About an hour. It is a walk through their past you could not otherwise take.

Low-energy nights: LDR date ideas for when you are both tired

Not every date needs energy. These are for the nights when a full plan would be one more thing to fail at.

• Question of the day. Open the room, answer the one question privately, and read both answers together once they are both in. Needs two phones. Two minutes. It keeps a daily streak going, and a streak is the lightest way of showing up.
• Read to each other. One of you reads a chapter aloud while the other lies down with the phone on the pillow. Needs a book and a quiet room. About 30 minutes. Being read to feels closer over the phone than it does in the room.
• Fall asleep on a call. Say goodnight, leave the line open, and let the other hear you drift off. Needs a charger within reach and an agreement about who hangs up. All night, in a sense. Nobody is performing, and hearing someone breathe is company.
• Camera roll archaeology. Scroll back to the same month on your phones and send each other three photos you had forgotten. Needs phones with too many photos on them. Twenty minutes. Old photos do the talking when neither of you has the energy to.
• Chores with the camera on. Fold laundry or tidy a drawer with the call open and no obligation to talk. Needs a phone stand and a dull task. About 40 minutes. Companionable silence is the thing long distance couples miss most and mention least.

Special occasions

Anniversaries and birthdays are the nights when a call feels most like a consolation prize. Plan around that.

• Anniversary dinner, dressed up. Dress as if you were going out, eat something better than usual and lay a proper table each. Needs candles and a phone stand. Two hours. Dressing up for someone who is not in the room says the night counts.
• Birthday parcel opened live. Post a box of small wrapped things with a note saying which to open first, and be on the call for the opening. Needs postage time and wrapping paper. About 30 minutes on the day. Watching someone open a present beats the present.
• Two midnights at New Year. Toast midnight in each time zone on a call. Needs a clock set to both zones and something fizzy. Two short calls a few hours apart. Two midnights is one of the few advantages of distance, so take it.
• Scavenger hunt in their flat. During a visit, hide small notes or gifts around their place, then on the day direct them to each one by video. Needs a visit beforehand and a good memory. About an hour. It plants a bit of you in their home.
• Plan the next visit as the date. Pick dates, book the tickets and choose one thing you will definitely do. Needs a calendar and a budget. About an hour. A date on the calendar changes the mood of every call until then.

How the two-phone games work

Every game here runs on two phones with no account and no download: one of you starts a room, sends the link, and the other taps it. Each phone gets its own view. In Question of the day and the Newlywed game you both answer privately and nothing is shown until both answers are in, so there is no hedging.

The asymmetric games use the two screens differently. In the escape room each phone shows half the clues, so a puzzle only gives way when you describe what you see. In Codenames for two, one phone shows the spymaster's key and the other the face-down cards. All of them work live on a call or turn by turn across time zones.