Making friends in Catania as a remote worker: where people meet

Walk up Via Etnea at seven in the evening and you'll think Catania is the easiest city in the world to make friends in. Everyone is out, the bars spill onto the pavement, people stop every ten metres to greet someone. Then you go home and realise that nobody greeted you.

Nomads.com lists "hard to make friends" among Catania's cons, and I won't pretend otherwise. Catanesi are warm and curious, but most social lives here were built at school and in the neighbourhood, and they're full. There's no big nomad scene to slot into. What there is, as of September 2026, is a handful of real doors. Here they are, along with the ones that don't exist and what to do about it.

Start where people already sit: the coworkings

Isola Catania, in Palazzo Biscari (Piazza Cardinale Pappalardo 23), is the closest thing the city has to a meeting point for people who work on laptops. It's a social-innovation hub as well as a coworking: it runs programmes such as Naturae, Water-Smart Hub and Energie con il Sud, and it sat at the city's Tavolo dell'Innovazione in March 2026 alongside the university, STMicroelectronics and Confindustria. Its public events lean towards social economy and start-ups and are mostly in Italian. Go anyway. The best entry point is Isola Connect, every Wednesday: an open community coworking day where your first visit is free. After that, a day pass is €12 (price seen in November 2026).

@localhost, Via dei Piccioni 29 in Cibali, is the opposite in size: 12 desks, a shared garden, €9 a day. It's run by the digital agency Specialisti Digitali, hosts regular talks and meetups, and has a Telegram community group. Ask to be added on your first day; it's where events get announced.

One piece of advice that costs nothing: eat lunch in the shared space, not at your desk. In Italy, conversations start around food.

ESN Catania is not only for students

The Erasmus Student Network chapter is the most active international group in the city, and its own page says it's open to "all international people" who are young and live in Catania: Erasmus students, trainees, interns, au pairs, UniCT students. "Young" isn't defined. If you're in your twenties you'll probably fit in; if you're 45, write to them first and ask.

The chapter has had a full 2026: a new board presented on 15 January, a Recruitment Day on 12 February, a Naples spring-break trip on 23–26 April, the national event in May, a welcome event on 7 July. It lists a Tandem language programme and trips to Siracusa, Modica and Ragusa, Palermo, Agrigento, Noto and Marzamemi, and the Aeolian Islands. Events are announced on Instagram (@esn_catania); the email is catania@esn.it.

Catania International and the Nomade Table dinners

Catania International is a smaller lead. It runs an Instagram account (@catania.international.people) and posts events on Luma. On Sunday 26 April 2026 it co-hosted a Catania Street Art Tour with Sicilia Gaia, starting at 10:00 from Piazza Stesicoro, "designed for internationals, expats, and curious travelers": €20 (€5 online, €15 on the day), minimum 10 people, with a licensed guide and insurance. Follow the account for the next one.

Nomade Table organises "Dinner & New Friends" evenings in Catania: everyone pays for their own meal, registration is mandatory, and the restaurant is revealed only when you register. The format is simple and it works for exactly the reason Catania works: sitting at a table. One warning. The event page reuses the same link for each dinner (in June 2026 that link carried a "Digital Nomad Meetup Catania" by BlaBla Language Exchange Italy), and the organiser warns that dates on Facebook may be wrong. Check the next date on the organiser's page and register before you plan your evening around it.

Get your hands dirty: beach clean-ups

If you'd rather meet people doing something than drinking something, clean-ups are the best-kept secret in Catania. They're open, practical, and nobody cares how good your Italian is when you're holding a bin bag.

• May 2026, Plaia: a weekend clean-up on the Plaia collected more than 60 bags, with Lega Navale, WWF Sicilia Nord Orientale, CAI Catania, Confcommercio and beach-club operators (LiveUniversity).
• 6 June 2026, Playa, free beach no. 1: the association Disummer and Plastic Free Catania ran a clean-up aimed at Erasmus students and locals, registered as an EU Green Week partner event.
• 5 July 2026, the seafront: about 100 Plastic Free Sicilia volunteers collected 110 bags, according to a La Sicilia photo gallery.

I couldn't find dates for the coming months. Clean-ups cluster in spring and summer, so follow Plastic Free Catania's social pages and be ready for an early start: by ten in the morning in July the sand is already hot.

Walk with the CAI

The CAI Catania (Club Alpino Italiano, Sezione dell'Etna) is how many people here meet the volcano, and each other. Its 2026 courses, held between January and June, included a basic hiking course (E1) at €60 for members, which includes planning an Etna hike; a snowshoe course with an Etna outing at €10 for members; and the 44th introduction to caving, €160 for members or €235 for non-members, a price that includes CAI membership.

I couldn't find the section's rules for non-members on ordinary outings; some other CAI sections charge non-members a small insurance fee per outing. The simplest path is to join the section. You'll hike in Italian, which is half the point: nothing teaches you words like a four-hour climb with people who want to explain the lava flows to you.

What doesn't exist, and how to cope

Better you hear it from me than discover it in your second week.

No English-speaking running club. I found no social run club in Catania. There is Corri Catania, a mass run-or-walk (the 2026 edition was on Sunday 10 May), and ESN once organised a group run for it. Until next spring, run the seafront at the same hour every morning. Faces become familiar faster than you'd think.

No regular language exchange. There's no recurring tandem night in 2026 that I could verify. There have been one-offs: a multilingual aperitivo at YESchool, Via Firenze 204, on 30 October 2025, and "Make Yourself Understood – The Italian Way", an Italian mini-course by the association Welcome 2 Sicily at the Ostello degli Elefanti (last edition 18 December 2025). BlaBla Language Exchange runs regular evenings in Messina, but I couldn't confirm a Catania schedule. Online, MyLanguageExchange has members in Catania, and the ESN tandem programme is the best in-person option. My guide to learning Italian in Sicily covers courses.

No nomad meetup. Nomads.com shows no meetups scheduled for Catania, InterNations has no Catania community (the page doesn't exist; the nearest is Naples), and I found no active Meetup.com group. Third-party sites mention Facebook groups such as "Catania Expats", but I couldn't verify them, so I won't send you there. The Expat Exchange Catania forum is active with 2026 posts, though it's for questions rather than events.

The way to cope is unglamorous: be the organiser. Post in the @localhost Telegram group, mention it at Isola Connect, suggest an aperitivo on Friday. In a city without a scene, two people at a table is already a meetup, and the second time there are four.

Festivals: the city's social glue

Nothing in Catania brings people together like Sant'Agata, the patron saint's festival. The core days are always 3–5 February: the offering of wax on the 3rd, the dawn Mass and the long procession of the reliquary bust through the city on the 4th, and on the 5th the procession up Via Etnea and the climb of Via Crociferi, which runs into the early hours of the 6th. Devotees wear white robes. In 2026 the full programme ran from 30 January to 12 February, and a smaller summer feast (16–18 August) marked 900 years since the relics were brought to Catania in 1126.

Sant'Agata isn't something you watch from a balcony. It's something Catanesi do with family and friends. If a colleague offers to take you, say yes. That's how you end up, at two in the morning, eating something fried with people who were strangers in the afternoon.

The autumn calendar helps too (2026 dates, as a guide for next year): the Sagra del Pistacchio in Bronte (25–27 September and 2–4 October 2026), the Ottobrata Zafferanese, every Sunday in October in Zafferana Etnea, and Le Vie dei Tesori, which opens closed palaces and churches in Catania from 9 October to 8 November 2026. Festivals are where invitations happen: "we're going on Sunday, come" is the most Catanese sentence there is.

A plan for your first week

1. Monday: book a day at @localhost and ask to join the Telegram group.
2. Tuesday: write to ESN Catania, follow @esn_catania and @catania.international.people.
3. Wednesday: Isola Connect at Palazzo Biscari. First visit free.
4. Thursday: check the next Nomade Table date and register.
5. Friday: invite one person from the coworking for an aperitivo. Just one.
6. Saturday: the Pescheria before 11, then an arancino (here it's masculine; Palermo says arancina). The rest is in my guide to eating well in Sicily.
7. Sunday: look at the CAI programme and Plastic Free Catania's pages for the next outing.

For the practical side of the city, read my Catania guide and the Catania page; for everyday habits, the everyday life and language chapter.

Update November 2026. Isola's public agenda lists a "Forum sull'economia sociale – Sicilia che Innova" on 17 November at 10:30. @localhost has two talks in Italian: "Il Maestro come specchio – Il mio viaggio interiore" on 17 November and "Affidare i social, senza rinunciare al controllo" on 18 November. On 18 December it also lists "La 'Festa aziendale' che non avresti avuto – v.6", hosted by a group called Remote Workers Catania: ask about it at the desk. The last Nomade Table dinner shown on the organiser's page was on 17 September 2026, with no later date as of 4 November, so check before you go. Nomads.com still shows no Catania meetups. Sant'Agata 2027 falls on the usual 3–5 February; the Archdiocese hadn't published the programme yet.