How To Play With Friends In Nintendo Switch Sports Resort

Published Oct 22, 2026, 1:38 PM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. Nintendo Switch Sports Resort is the latest entry in the first-party Nintendo series that kicked off with the incredibly popular and iconic Wii Sports. The series has continued to grow and expand since then, and this latest installment on the Switch 2 includes a roster of 12 sports featuring classics like tennis and bowling, alongside fun new additions such as skateboarding and thumb wrestling. What made Wii Sports so popular was how it felt to play the game with friends. That's no different almost two decades later in Switch Sports Resort. In fact, it's even better as you no longer have to rely on those you want to compete with and against being in the same room as you. You can now play with those friends online, and below you'll find everything you need to know to make that happen. There are a few steps you will need to follow to get together with your friends to play Switch Sports Resort online. Once you know the process, though, it's simple to set up. The first thing you will need to do is find the Friend Lobby option on the Switch Sports Resort home screen. It will be the first one, on the far left, of the seven options at the bottom of the screen, under the sport options. You will then be asked to confirm the number of players. That's how many people will be playing on your Switch 2, not how many people you plan to play with online; hence there only being a maximum of two. After that, you will then have to choose between creating a lobby or joining one. Once you choose to create a lobby, you will be asked how many people will be joining it. You don't need to know the exact number, giving your friends the freedom to hop in and out whenever they like without having to all leave and start a new lobby. You can only have a maximum of eight players in your lobby, though. This is also where you can set a password and invite ID for the lobby if you want to, but both are optional. Once you have set those parameters and created your lobby, others will be able to join, provided you are friends with them on Switch. All they have to do is select the Join Lobby option after hitting Friend Lobby and selecting how many players will be participating on their console, and they will be presented with the option to join your lobby. How Many People Can Play Each Sport? This is where things start to get a little complicated. Even though you can have up to eight players in your lobby, not everyone can play together in every sport. You, obviously, can't have eight people all playing table tennis at the same table. There are only two sports where eight players can all play together at the same time - Bowling and Golf. Six sports allow four players to play at the same time - Archery, Volleyball, Basketball, Prop Plane, Skateboarding, and Power Cruising. The remaining four sports - Boxing, Thumb Wrestling, Table Tennis, and Tennis - can only be played by two players at a time on a maximum of two consoles. You also can't spectate while others are playing. That doesn't mean some of you have to wait in the lobby while others have all the fun. To start playing a sport together, a player must start a huddle and select a sport. Others can then join their huddle, and once the required number of players have joined, the sport will begin. Lobbies can have more than one huddle at a time, so if four people from a group of six go off to play volleyball, the other two can start a separate huddle and break off for a game of table tennis. How To Play Online With Others Switch Sports Resort also lets you play online with other players from around the world, whether they're on your friends list or not. Playing with other people is a lot simpler than playing with friends, as it doesn't require you to set up a lobby. You can just jump right in. To play online, you will need to navigate to the second option on the home screen - Casual Online Play. After that, you will once again need to select how many players will be participating on your console, one or two. There's also a third option that lets you pair up with a friend playing elsewhere before you compete against others online. The biggest difference between playing casually online and playing with friends is that you can't select which sport you play - it will be chosen at random. Before being matched up, you will see a checklist featuring all 12 sports. All will be selected, and you can uncheck whichever ones you would rather not see pop up in the rotation. Once you've curated your list of sports, you can hit Find Match, and you'll be thrown into a random sport on the list along with other people playing online.