The State of American Mahjong 2026
A structured count of every in-person mahjong game MAHJ MAHJ could find listed online across the United States — with the methodology in plain view, so you can judge the numbers for yourself.
Snapshot: July 2, 2026 · 747 listings · 49 cities · Download the data (CSV)
Methodology
This is a listings census: a count of individual in-person mahjong events and standing games that were publicly listed online as of the snapshot date. It is not an estimate of all mahjong played in the United States — most kitchen-table and private-club games are never posted anywhere, and nothing here tries to model them.
- What counts as a listing. One publicly listed in-person mahjong event or standing game in a US city — a class, an open table, a club night, a tournament. Online-only games are excluded.
- Where they come from. Public event pages on Eventbrite and Meetup, plus mahjong club and community-organization websites. Each listing carries a source; 93.6% trace to Eventbrite, so the count is biased toward organizers who use online ticketing.
- De-duplication. The same game often appears on several platforms and city pages. Cross-listing duplicates were identified and removed before counting, so each real game is counted once.
- Snapshot, not a live feed. Every number on this page is computed from a single dated capture (July 2, 2026) by a build script — none are hand-entered. Future snapshots will be published with their own dates.
- Known bias.Cities with organizers who post to ticketing platforms look larger; scenes that run on group chats and word of mouth look smaller than they are. Read the counts as “findable online,” not “all that exists.”
What we found
Of 747 listings in this snapshot, 286 were upcoming, 39 ongoing (recurring/standing games), and 422 had already taken place as of July 2, 2026.
Top cities by tracked listings
| # | City | Listings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | St. Louis | 66 |
| 2 | Dallas | 48 |
| 3 | New York | 47 |
| 4 | Los Angeles | 44 |
| 5 | Washington DC | 44 |
| 6 | San Francisco | 42 |
| 7 | Nashville | 38 |
| 8 | Boston | 36 |
| 9 | Columbus | 34 |
| 10 | Bay Area | 29 |
| 11 | Chicago | 26 |
| 12 | Miami | 26 |
Full per-city counts for all 49 cities are in the downloadable CSV.
Source diversity
Listings came from 41 distinct sources, but they are heavily concentrated: 699 of 747 listings (93.6%) trace to Eventbrite. The remaining 48 come from 35 independent sources — mahjong club sites, community centers, and Meetup. That long tail is the part of the scene that ticketing platforms miss, and the hardest to find without doing this kind of collection by hand.
The organizer ecosystem
Behind the listings are the people and groups who host. We mapped 466 distinct organizers across the tracked cities. Of those, 218 already have at least one event listed on MAHJ MAHJ, 210 are active with a findable public contact, and 38 are active but harder to reach. Notably, 164 of them surfaced only by reading the detail pages of live events — organizers who are effectively invisible to a normal web search.
This page reports aggregate counts only. Individual organizers are not named here.
Census FAQ
How many mahjong events are there in the United States?
There is no official registry. MAHJ MAHJ tracked 747 live in-person mahjong listings across 49 US cities as of July 2, 2026. This is a listings census of publicly findable events, not an estimate of all mahjong activity — many private and recurring games are never listed online.
Which US city has the most mahjong activity?
By tracked listings, St. Louis leads with 66, followed by Dallas (48) and New York (47). Listing counts reflect where events are posted online, which favors cities with active organizers who publish on ticketing platforms.
Is mahjong growing in the United States?
We do not publish a growth rate, because a single snapshot gives no basis for one. This census is a point-in-time count. As we take repeat snapshots, changes over time will be reported here with dates — but we will not claim a trend we have not measured.
Where does this data come from?
Listings are collected from public event pages — Eventbrite and Meetup, plus mahjong club and community-organization websites — and verified before inclusion. Cross-listing duplicates are removed. As of this snapshot, 93.6% of listings trace to Eventbrite, so the data is biased toward events that use online ticketing.
Can I use or cite this data?
Yes. The aggregated dataset is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license — download the CSV and cite "MAHJ MAHJ, State of American Mahjong 2026." Please link back to this page so readers can see the methodology and snapshot date.
Source of record. MAHJ MAHJ, The State of American Mahjong 2026. Snapshot July 2, 2026; last verified 2026-07-02. Aggregated dataset licensed CC BY 4.0. Numbers regenerate from a committed snapshot via npm run census:build.