Spread over three floors in Manchester's Northern Quarter, 33 Oldham Street is a multi-use bar, cafe and live-music venue created by Kendal Calling founder Andy Smith and Jason McGuire of Manchester Coffee Co. The ground floor works as a coffee shop by day and a cocktail bar by night, with the upper levels and a large roof terrace -- among the biggest in the area -- extending the space from morning into the evening. Music sits at the centre of the concept. The club-style first floor was fitted .....

Built into Grade II*-listed Victorian railway arches beneath the Manchester Central convention centre, 53two is an independent fringe theatre and arts venue with a flexible black-box auditorium seating around 150. A registered charity, it grew out of the Manchester Actors Platform, staging its first show in 2016 before developing into a full theatre and events space. The company began in a former car showroom on Albion Street, moved through temporary premises, and signed a long lease on two arc.....

Up a staircase above The Peer Hat, reached through an unmarked door down an alley off Stevenson Square, Aatma is a multipurpose live music and events venue on the first floor of a former textile mill in Manchester's Northern Quarter. Buried in the back streets of the district, it carries a determinedly DIY character and a stripped-back, industrial feel that has become part of its charm. The room has a notable lineage. Until 2015 it operated as the Kraak Gallery, a celebrated underground space c.....

Few venues carry the atmosphere of Albert Hall in Manchester, a former Wesleyan Methodist chapel on Peter Street that lay hidden and disused for decades before reopening as one of the city's most striking live-music spaces. Built in 1910, the building's soaring main hall, complete with stained-glass windows, ornate balcony and a grand pipe organ, was rediscovered largely intact and brought back to life in 2013, retaining the spectacular character of its original design. The main room is the hea.....

At the civic heart of Manchester lies Albert Square, a broad public space laid out in the 1860s and dominated by the soaring Gothic Revival town hall that ranks among the finest Victorian buildings in Britain. The square takes its name from the elaborate memorial to Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, that stands at its centre beneath an ornate canopy, one of the earliest such monuments raised after his death and the model for the better-known example in London. Around it the square is.....

Billed as Manchester's first hobby house, Altogether Otherwise is a community-led creative space in the NOMA neighbourhood, housed in a former disused printing works on Hanover Street known as the Avery building. It is built around the idea of doing creative things purely for enjoyment, offering an escape from results-driven routine. The space is home to a wide array of clubs that anyone can join, most of them free, ranging from wool weaving, pottery and woodwork to gardening, cooking and readi.....

Amber's is a multi-room electronic nightclub and live-music venue at Circle Square, on Symphony Park just off Oxford Road in central Manchester. Opened in December 2024 on the former site of the Canvas club beneath the development, the 1,000-capacity space quickly became one of the most talked-about additions to the city's nightlife. Spread across two purpose-built rooms, the venue blends a full live-performance space with a late-night electronic club, designed around immersive sound and stripp.....

Opened on Halloween weekend in October 2022, Area Manchester is a nightclub and event venue at 50 Sackville Street, opposite Sackville Gardens and just off Canal Street in the heart of Manchester's Gay Village. It was launched by the operators behind AREA London, joining their sister venues ON Bar and Vanilla in the area, in a space previously known as Tribeca. The venue is multifaceted by design, set over two floors with multiple bars and a state-of-the-art sound and lighting rig. Its programm.....

Housed in a railway arch on Deansgate Locks, Ark Manchester is a party bar and club on Whitworth Street West, one of the strip of venues built into the viaduct arches alongside the Rochdale and Bridgewater canals. It is arranged as three distinct rooms over two floors, which can be hired individually or taken over as a whole for large groups. The venue trades on a mix of moods -- from relaxed, candlelit canal-side drinks to high-energy club nights with DJs and party entertainment such as stilt .....

Band on the Wall is a celebrated live-music venue on Swan Street, on the edge of Manchester's Northern Quarter and Ancoats. The building began life as a pub, the George and Dragon, with the first licence on the site recorded in 1803, and it sits close to the former Smithfield Markets in what was a bustling, music-rich part of the industrial city. Its distinctive name dates from the 1930s, when landlord Ernie Tyson installed a small stage high on the far wall so that a resident band could play a.....