Chinese New Year in Manchester

Chinese New Year is always a colourful cultural highlight, bringing brightness to the dark winter days here in the UK. This is especially true for a city like Manchester, whose Chinatown buzzes all year round but becomes a hive of activity and celebration come New Year.

While the celebrations have been pared back slightly this year, there’s still plenty of action to welcome in the Year of The Tiger in Manchester City Centre. This includes photography exhibitions, film events, and the presence of a huge wooden tiger watching over St Ann’s Square. And many of the annual Chinatown celebrations will be going ahead, too, including thousands of red lanterns on the city’s trees, an illuminated dragon, traditional lion dances, Chinese acrobatics, singing, poetry reading, Kungfu and – of course – dazzling explosions of colour everywhere you look!

The celebrations also present a great opportunity to stop for a bite to eat in one of the city’s best Chinese restaurants (find our top picks of those below). Our call is to get down to Chinatown early, take a seat, order some delicious food and soak in the festivities as Manchester rings in the Lunar New Year.

Here are our picks