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The Quiz Night Where Valencia's Expats Find Their People
Valencia's English-speaking expats now have their own informal social hub — a way into the city through quiz nights run by a team of Russian-speaking immigrants.
Quiz Eat Drink was launched by Yevgeny Korchak together with his partners Dmitry and Stu. Before moving to Spain, he lived in Prague and Paris and has worked in tourism for over ten years. In Valencia, he quickly realised that the conventional tour format did not work for everyone.
"I don't like rattling off dates. Most people simply don't remember them. By the next day, you've already forgotten what was built when — and that's fine. What matters more to people is understanding how to live here, how the city actually works in practice. The quizzes became a way of creating that kind of environment," he says.
The idea came from British pub quiz culture, but in Valencia, the format was adapted to meet a specific need: helping expats from different countries connect, many of whom had not yet found their social circle in a new place. Similar events already existed in the city, but according to Yevgeny, they tended to feel more like a bar add-on.
"It was three or four questions between drinks. We wanted to create a proper game — with structure, with momentum, so that people would genuinely engage and come back," he says.
The quizzes run several times a week at different venues — Mondays in the Mestalla neighbourhood (El Garaje), Thursdays in Cánovas, for example. Games are held separately in English and Spanish. Entry costs around €5–6.
An evening lasts around two and a half hours: four rounds, forty questions, teams of up to five. You can come with friends or alone — participants are paired up on the spot, which is one of the reasons so many newcomers show up.
Around 15 teams gather on any given evening, and the format feels more like an event than a classic quiz: food is served during the game, and after the final round, many people stick around to chat.
Topics change every week and are often tied to the calendar — from Las Fallas to Christmas — but also cover film, music, pop culture, individual countries, or general knowledge.
"We usually announce the topic the day before. Some people genuinely prepare — they read up and discuss it with their team. But more often it's simply a reason to come out. And that's fine — the game shouldn't feel like stress," says Yevgeny.
That said, the competitive edge is real: there is a points system, a leaderboard, and winners receive meaningful prizes — restaurant gift vouchers and small owl figurines, symbols of wisdom.
The mix of participants is almost always diverse: Americans, British, Germans, Spaniards. Over time, the quizzes have taken on a function that turned out to matter more than the game itself.
Very often people come because they've just moved here and don't know anyone yet. They sit down at a table, start talking, then head somewhere together after the game, then meet up again. And at some point they have a social circle.
Yevgeny Korchak
In his observation, people from post-Soviet countries tend to arrive in established groups, while English-speaking participants are comfortable meeting strangers on the spot. Spaniards, meanwhile, tend to approach the game as a competition.
Spaniards really like to win. We try to keep the balance so the game stays fair, but without turning into a policing exercise. Though sometimes we do mildly 'penalise' the guilty," Yevgeny says.
By now, many regular participants know each other by name and form teams in advance, while newcomers continue to arrive without knowing anyone, drawn by the prospect of finding their place in that community.
Over time, according to Yevgeny, a permanent community has formed around the project — people for whom the quizzes became one of the first ways to feel like residents of Valencia rather than tourists.