Why Gen Z Is Suddenly Obsessed With Mahjong

Walk into a mahjong club in Washington, D.C., San Francisco or Dallas these days, and you're just as likely to find a 25-year-old learning the game for the first time as you are a lifelong player who's been at it for decades. A 200-year-old tile game with deep roots in Chinese culture is experiencing a genuine resurgence, and the people driving it are largely Gen Z and millennials.

The numbers back up what's visible on the ground. Eventbrite reported a 179% increase in U.S. mahjong events between 2023 and 2024, and that growth has only continued since. NPR visited a free drop-in mahjong session at D.C.'s Capital Jewish Museum and found two full tables of first-time players learning the rules alongside more experienced regulars scattered throughout the room.

A Break From Screens

The most consistent explanation people give for the game's appeal is remarkably simple: it forces you to put your phone away. Mahjong requires focus, physical tiles and face-to-face interaction, exactly the kind of tactile, offline experience that's become rarer for a generation that grew up online.

"It's a really tactile game, and it's really a social game," said Nicole Wong, an Oakland-based writer and founder of The Mahjong Project, an oral history and instructional project documenting the game's role across the Asian diaspora. "It really easily builds community among people. It's a good way to unplug and not just be on your phone."

That desire for offline connection isn't unique to mahjong. Eventbrite has tracked similar growth across a broader category of hands-on hobbies sometimes nicknamed "grannycore," including baking workshops and needlework circles, all activities once associated with older generations that are now drawing young adults specifically because they're slow, tactile and require real presence.

A Path Back to Heritage

For many younger Asian American players, mahjong carries a second layer of meaning beyond simply logging off. The game has long anchored family gatherings across generations, but younger players say they were often watched rather than invited to play growing up, learning the rules secondhand rather than through direct participation.

Jaimie, a player interviewed by EnVi Media, described how learning the game as an adult has reshaped her relationship to her own family history. "When you play mahjong with a grandpa or a kid, everyone's more on the same page," she said. "At family parties, there's very established hierarchies [and] ways that you're interacting with people. At the mahjong table, that can change up a little bit, which is fun and memorable. If you beat your grandma at a game, that's a big deal."

Ethan Lee, a 25-year-old Chinese American who founded San Francisco's Youth Luck Leisure Mahjong Club, has taken that reclamation even further, turning it into a full-blown social scene. His bimonthly parties now draw up to 30 tables and 200 guests, complete with live DJs, custom cocktails and instructors on hand to teach newcomers. "A lot of people are just really intrigued even though they don't really know how to play," Lee said. "There's a cultural component they're trying to connect with. It's kind of like a cultural nostalgia."

An Intergenerational Bridge

Despite the Gen Z-driven headlines, much of what's remarkable about the resurgence is how it's bringing different generations back to the same table rather than creating a separate, younger scene entirely. At community centers and local meetups, longtime players are stepping into teaching roles, while some elders who never learned the game themselves are picking it up for the first time alongside younger regulars. Historian Gregg Swain, who has documented mahjong's evolution, told Axios there are more than 40 global variations of the game, noting that "the game has been changing ever since it started."

In Washington, D.C., specifically, the DCMahjCollective launched last year to capitalize on the city's growing interest, part of a wave of new clubs and instructors capitalizing on demand across the country. Dallas has emerged as one of the country's biggest modern mahjong hubs, with clubs like The Charleston Club (named for the game's iconic American opening ritual) hosting curated, cafe-style events aimed at a younger, design-conscious crowd. Similar scenes have taken hold internationally, from rooftop bars in New York to boutique clubs in Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong.

Why Now

Part of the timing traces back to the pandemic, which accelerated interest in slower, presence-based activities after years of digital-only socializing. But the growth has continued well past any short-term pandemic rebound, suggesting something more durable is behind it: a generation actively looking for structured reasons to gather in person, learn something with real depth, and, in many cases, reconnect with a cultural inheritance that had started to feel out of reach.

As Wong put it, describing what keeps people coming back once they've learned the basics: mahjong isn't just a game people are rediscovering. For a lot of younger players, it's becoming a genuine social infrastructure, one they're building for themselves, tile by tile.

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