The Best Team Building Activities in Lanzarote, From the People Who Run Them Here
Most team building days fail for the same reason: they could happen anywhere. A hotel function room, some sticky notes, a facilitator asking the team to build a tower out of spaghetti. People smile, take part, and a week later remember nothing. The island you did it on is irrelevant, because the activity had nothing to do with the place.
Lanzarote allows the opposite. Here the activity and the landscape are the same thing. You walk inside a volcano, blend your own wine in a cellar dug into lava, sail along a coast that looks like nowhere else in Europe. The team doesn't take part in an exercise: it has a day that could only have happened on this island. And that, months later, is what people keep talking about.
This guide covers the team building activities that genuinely work in Lanzarote, organised by what you actually want to achieve with your team. It is written from the inside, by the people who run them on the ground, not from a generic activity catalogue that sells the same thing in twelve destinations.
Why Lanzarote Works for Team Building
Before the activities, it helps to understand what makes the island different. It isn't only the climate, although 20 to 26 degrees almost year round solves the problem that ruins half of all European offsites. It's the combination of three things that rarely line up.
The first is scale. Lanzarote is small, and that changes everything. Moving 40 people from a bodega to the coast takes twenty minutes, not half a day on a coach. You can string together a morning work session, an outdoor activity at midday and a dinner with sunset views without the day disappearing into transfers. The team's time is spent together, not on the road.
The second is character. César Manrique fought for decades to keep the island free of concrete and neon, and the result is a destination that still looks like itself. Your team will not spend the day in the same interchangeable resort it would find on any other coastline. It will be somewhere that signals, without a word, that the company chose this offsite deliberately.
The third is concentrated variety. Within an hour's drive you have volcanoes, vineyards, cliffs, golden-sand beaches and white villages. That means you can design a team building programme with three very different moods without leaving the island, and adapt it on the fly if the weather or the group's mood changes. If you want the full logistics of running a corporate event here, we set them out in our complete guide to corporate retreats in Lanzarote.
The Best Team Building Activities in Lanzarote
These are the activities we run again and again because they work with real corporate groups, not because they look good in a brochure. Each is built for a different objective: cohesion, collaboration, leadership, or simply rewarding a team that has earned it.
1. Volcanic Trek Around Volcán del Cuervo
The trail that circles and enters the caldera of Volcán del Cuervo is the easiest team building activity to explain and the one that surprises people most. It is an accessible walk, suitable for almost any fitness level, that ends inside a crater. You don't need to invent a metaphor about overcoming challenges together: the landscape supplies it. It works well as the programme's first activity, breaking the ice on day one with something that asks for nothing and gives everything. It pairs well with a team orientation challenge or a photography task. For groups wanting something tougher, the north offers longer routes we run as our north trekking experience.
2. Wine Tasting and Blending in a Volcanic Bodega in La Geria
La Geria is one of the strangest wine landscapes on earth: each vine grows in a pit dug into the ash, sheltered from the wind by a low semicircle of stone. A blending activity, where each team mixes its own wine from local grapes such as volcanic Malvasía and competes for the best combination, is team building disguised as pleasure. It forces a group to decide, to defend an opinion, to reach agreement, all with a glass in hand. It is the activity that works best as the close of a working day, just before dinner. If island wine genuinely interests you, we go deep in our guide to Lanzarote's secret bodegas and run it as our wine tour.
3. Regatta or Sailing for Beginners as a Team
Few activities expose how a team functions under pressure as quickly as a boat. A team regatta, or a sailing introduction for groups with no experience, hands out roles naturally: someone takes the helm, someone works the sails, someone coordinates. There is no room for passengers. Off the Lanzarote coast, with the steady trade winds and turquoise water, the activity also has a visual element that turns it into a memory. It is ideal for sales or leadership teams who already know each other and need to rebuild trust, not learn to introduce themselves.
4. Canarian Cooking Challenge With a Local Chef
A team cooking workshop, led by an island chef, around dishes such as papas arrugadas with mojo, sancocho or fresh fish baked in salt, is one of the most democratic activities there is. It depends on neither fitness nor language, and there is always someone who discovers an unexpected talent. It ends with the whole group eating what it cooked, which is the moment the hierarchy actually relaxes. It works brilliantly with international and mixed groups, and scales to any number by splitting into stations.
5. Shore or Boat Fishing With Local Skippers
Fishing demands something office work rarely does: shared patience and comfortable silence. A day of shore fishing with Lanzarote skippers, in teams and with a competitive edge, pulls people out of their usual register. It is a slow-paced activity, perfect for teams that spend all day connected and need to genuinely switch off while staying together. We run it in detail as our shore fishing experience.
6. Cultural Treasure Hunt Through the Work of César Manrique
A treasure hunt through the spaces César Manrique designed (Jameos del Agua, Mirador del Río, Jardín de Cactus) turns the island's culture into a team game. The tasks combine clues, creative challenges and a dose of healthy competition, and along the way the team discovers why Lanzarote is the way it is. It is the most flexible activity of all: it works with large groups, adapts to the team's level, and can be gamified as much as you like. Excellent for companies that value team building leaving a little learning behind too.
7. Group Kayaking and Paddleboarding
In sheltered coves like Los Charcones or the waters of Papagayo, a team kayak or paddleboard outing is accessible, fun and very visual. It needs no prior experience and lets you fold in simple challenges: relays, pair crossings, coordination tasks. It is the ideal option for the warmer months and for younger or active groups who prefer the sea to the mountain.
8. Surf Lesson at Famara
Famara beach, with nearly six kilometres of sand beneath a spectacular cliff, is one of the best places in Europe to learn to surf. A beginners' lesson run in teams is a challenge that levels everyone: the CEO and the intern fall off the board in exactly the same way. That shared vulnerability is what makes it work as team building. It asks for some fitness and a group willing to get wet, in the literal sense.
9. Blind Tasting and Gala Dinner as a Finale
To close the programme, a team blind tasting followed by a gala dinner in a striking venue turns the last night into the moment people remember. The tasting adds a final note of play and competition; the dinner, somewhere like Castillo de San José above the harbour, gives the whole thing the weight of an event. It is the ending that sends the team home feeling the company did things properly.
How to Choose the Activity by Objective
The question is not which activity is best, but what you want to change in your team. A good programme is designed backwards, from the objective.
If you want cohesion and ice-breaking, low-risk, high-participation activities work best: the volcanic trek, the cooking challenge, the cultural treasure hunt. Nobody is exposed and everyone takes part from minute one.
If you want collaboration and communication under pressure, the sea is your ally: the regatta and sailing hand out real roles and show how the team coordinates when something is at stake. Bodega blending serves the same purpose in a calmer key, forcing a group decision.
If you want leadership and trust, the activities that take people out of their comfort zone (surfing, a long fishing day) reveal who takes the initiative and who holds the group together when things don't go right first time.
If what you want is to reward, then we are no longer talking about exercises but about an incentive trip, and that deserves its own section.
Team Building and Incentive Travel: When the Activity Is the Reward
Not every company programme is trying to fix something. Sometimes the team already works and the job is to reward it. An incentive trip in Lanzarote changes the tone: here the activities stop being an exercise and become a privilege. A private catamaran cruise, a sunset dinner above the Los Hervideros cliffs, an exclusive visit to a bodega closed to the public, reserved access to places the ordinary tourist never sees.
The difference from standard team building is intent. The incentive asks nothing of the team, it only gives something back. And Lanzarote, thanks to its scale and character, is one of the few European destinations where a three-day incentive trip feels exclusive without an extravagant budget. The island does much of the work.
Logistics: How Many, When and How
Lanzarote handles groups well from eight people up to around two hundred. Below that ceiling, the island is built for this; above three hundred, it is worth looking at Tenerife or Gran Canaria. Most of the team building programmes we run fall between fifteen and eighty people.
The best window for a corporate event runs from late September to mid-June: comfortable temperatures for outdoor activities, a quieter island and genuine availability at the venues you actually want. A single day needs only three or four weeks' notice; for a multi-day programme with accommodation and a gala dinner, we recommend eight to twelve weeks, and earlier if you land in high season.
On format, what works best almost every time is to combine: a morning work session, a team building activity at midday and a dinner to close the day. The most common mistake is overfilling the schedule. A good programme lets the team breathe, because much of the cohesion happens in the free moments, not the scheduled activities.
How Lanzarote Untold Runs It
We don't sell standalone activities from a catalogue. We design the whole day around what your team needs: the objective, the size, the budget and the character of the group. We know the skippers, the winemakers, the chefs and the venue managers across the island, because we have worked with them on the ground for years. That means when something changes on the day, and something always changes, there is a real plan B, not an apology.
We handle everything your team shouldn't have to think about: the transfers, the timings, the catering, the accommodation, the on-the-day coordination. You look after your people. We look after the rest. You can see the full scope on our corporate events and team building in Lanzarote page, or tell us directly what you have in mind via contact.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best team building activity in Lanzarote?
There isn't a single one: it depends on your objective. For ice-breaking, the volcanic trek or the cooking challenge; for collaboration under pressure, sailing or a regatta; to reward the team, an incentive trip with exclusive experiences. The key is choosing the activity from what you want to achieve, not the other way round.
How many people can it be organised for?
We run groups from eight up to around two hundred people. Most team building programmes fall between fifteen and eighty, which is the size where the island performs best.
When is the best time of year?
Lanzarote works all twelve months, but the ideal window for corporate events runs from late September to mid-June: comfortable temperatures, a quieter island and better venue availability.
How far in advance should we book?
For a single day, three or four weeks is usually enough. For a multi-day programme with accommodation and a gala dinner, we recommend eight to twelve weeks, and more in high season.
Do the activities work for international teams?
Yes. We work in Spanish, English, German and French, and many of the activities (cooking, sailing, kayaking, treasure hunt) don't depend on language. They are especially good for mixed groups.
What is the difference between team building and an incentive trip?
Team building aims to work on something in the team (cohesion, communication, leadership). An incentive trip rewards a team that already works, with exclusive experiences that ask nothing in return. In Lanzarote we do both, and they are often combined in a single programme.
Planning a team building day, an offsite or an incentive trip in Lanzarote? We design the whole programme around what your team needs and run it on the ground from start to finish. Visit our corporate events and team building page for the service overview, or get in touch to tell us about your event. We reply within 24 hours with activity ideas, venue options and a first outline proposal.
