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Take up padel, learn a handcraft, hone your cooking skills, explore interesting new hiking trails, or add another language to your repertoire – Joburg's got plenty to offer. We've rounded up our top picks for the new you.
Learn a language
Parlez-vous français? Few skills are more valuable than learning a new language. Your travels will be enriched when you can interact with people in their mother tongue and you'll gain valuable insights into different cultures. It also improves your memory and problem-solving skills. Of course, there are few things more difficult to do. Duolingo's great, but truly learning a language requires practice – and people to practice with. These places in Joburg make it easier with courses tailored to your proficiency in the language.Learn French and isiZulu at Alliance Française in Parkwood while snacking on some croissants to keep you going. Order your pasta in fluent Italian by heading to Dante Alighieri Society in Houghton and sprechen Deutsch with Goethe-Institut, also in Parkwood. Wits Language School in Braamfontein offers a range of languages that include isiZulu, Portuguese, and South African Sign Language, as well as several courses on translating and teaching English as a foreign language. With options to do the courses part time or online, you can arrange your learning to suit your schedule.
Put on your dancing shoes
Head into 2025 moving and grooving. Whether it's ballroom, ballet, pole, or pantsula that strikes your fancy, Joburg's got the studio for you. Choreographer and dance coach Mark Hawkins' ballet for adult beginners in Forest Town will help you realise your Margot Fonteyn dreams in a fun and judgement-free space. With studios in Fourways, Illovo, and Fairlands, La Rouge Studio's liberating women's dance classes on offer include pole dancing, aerial hoop, and burlesque.
If you think you have what it takes and want to try your hand – or rather, your feet – at breakdancing, DS Dance Studios in Northcliff offers open breakdance classes, with all ages welcome. DS Dance Studios has an impressive track record, training various world and South African dance champions. Different variations of pantsula, twerking, and gqom are the standout dance styles offered at Soweto's Finest Dance Studio at Newtown Junction (yes, we said twerking). Then, Five6Seven8's Randburg studio offers 27 dance styles, including Latin and ballroom.Secret Sunrise is your go-to if you're after carefree movement, with events all around Johannesburg and Pretoria. And if you’ve always wanted to run away to the circus, well, The Cirk's classes at Cresta Shopping Centre are just the thing for you: swing from the rafters as you learn aerial and acrobatic tricks. They even have kids' courses so your little ones can join in the fun. For more, check out our feature on where to learn to dance in Joburg. Or mix your own beats to groove to with House DJ Tomby, who offers private lessons for budding to more experienced DJs.
Pick up a new sport
There’s nothing worse than taking the stairs at work only to find you need five minutes to catch your breath at the top so you don’t walk into the office huffing and puffing. With plenty of ways to get active in Joburg, you’ll soon be hitting the top feeling fresh and perky.
Dust off your bike and join Banditz Bicycle Club or Street Friends for one of their rides around Joburg. For more, check out our guide to cycling the city. If you prefer pounding the pavements, join the Braamfie Runners, #Letthepeoplerun aka Run Tell That, Shelflife running club or regular Parkrun events, and see where you can start racking up the distance with our guide to running in Johannesburg. For those in the mood for something more social, the latest sports craze is up your alley – find out where to play padel in Joburg and Pretoria, and read our intro to padel here.
Adrenaline junkies should check out CityROCK in Fontainebleau and Friends and Allies in Strijdom Park, two of Joburg's best indoor rock climbing and bouldering gyms. And once you're ready to flex your chops outdoors, here's our guide to climbing spots around the city. With rock climbing recently added to the Olympic Games, we've put together a list of other unique Olympic sports in Joburg and where to learn them. For a more high-energy outlet, there are great boxing clubs around the city, including MissFit, Fight Club, and Alan Toweel Boxing Gym.
Explore the great outdoors
While Cape Town gets praise for its natural splendour, Joburg and the surrounding Highveld and Bushveld regions aren't short on beauty. The magnificent Magaliesberg mountain range is one of the oldest on the planet, extending over 120km from Pretoria to Rustenburg. Join the Johannesburg chapter of the Mountain Club of South Africa (MCSA) for access to permit-holder-only hiking areas like Cedarberg Kloof and Mhlabatini, or strap on your boots and go mountaineering at these tried and tested trails in Gauteng.
If you're after some nature therapy without the longer drive, Joburg has beautiful parks aplenty – whether you favour long walks, carefully manicured formal gardens, or wild green spaces. Delta Park is one of the biggest green lungs in the city with lovely stretches of grassland and woodland, and prime cosmos-spotting territory in autumn. The beautiful Melville Koppies Nature Reserve plays host to bimonthly Poetic Licence Sundays, a nature-inspired poetry reading session.For more places to stretch your legs, check out our favourite city parks. Kloofendal Nature Reserve is a cultural heritage site just 25km from the City Centre that hosts fascinating walks and talks each month covering everything from wildflowers to biomimicry and fungi. And if cacti water wise plants are your game, the Johannesburg Succulent Society has monthly meetings and plant shows celebrating the rich diversity of South Africa's succulents.
Master chef, loading
Ditch the fast food and learn how to cook! Not only is it easier on the wallet, but it’s healthier too. The Cookery by The Secret Jozi Chef is a popular cooking school in Craighall Park that offers fun, themed lessons to groups. What’s Cooking Joburg has a range of hands-on workshops from upping your knife skills to crafting the perfect bao buns. Download a short format cookbook from That Food Guy Shop for a crash course on bread-baking, pasta-making, or vegetarian cooking.
Book a course at Vitality HealthyFood Studio on the rooftop of 1 Discovery Place in Sandton to learn to cook aromatic Asian cuisine or healthy summer brunch dishes. If you'd like a bigger range of Asian-inspired cooking classes, look at Umami Food Studio's class schedule. And if cooking from scratch isn't enough for you, HomeGrowers gardening and hydroponics nursery takes it up a notch with butter, cheese, and kombucha-making courses. You'll find them in Edenvale.
Get crafty
It's never too late to learn a new craft or grow your creative skills. When it comes to the art of pottery, Kim Sacks is one of the best – she also offers once-off workshops with experts in botanical dyeing, felting, and origami at her ceramics studio in Parkwood from time to time. Melville Mudroom also offers more pottery fun, and Create Lonehill at Prisonbreak Market is a ceramic painting café where you can customise cups, plates, bowls, and more.
Love wine and painting in equal measure? Unleash your inner artist at Braamfontein's The Playground Market with their regular paint and sip sessions. If you've always wanted to work with textiles, it's worth connecting with the Johannesburg Weavers and Spinners Guild (contact them to find out where the meeting for the current month will be), or follow The Yarn Tree in Parktown for knitting and crochet workshops.
Braamfontein's Wits Art Museum (WAM) and the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts (located in WAM) host book-binding and paper workshops, often tied to the museum's current exhibitions. For more paper crafts, you can check out the Pulp Verso (Pulp Paperworks and Edition Verso) pop-up store at 44 Stanley. While in the precinct, you can try your hand at still life painting or join a paint-your-own-tote workshop at Artwave Studio, or get your green thumbs out at one of JFF Plant Shop's worskhops.
If you'd like to make and wear your own custom jewellery, check out Bingley Park Jewellery for a variety of workshops. And if you already ollie and kickflip with the cool kids, The Crispy Academy in Orchards in collaboration with David Krut Projects teaches you how to build your own skateboard, from gluing and pressing to completing your masterpiece with a silkscreen or vinyl artwork.
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