MIF25: Festival Square

Festival Square is back for Manchester International Festival 2025, taking over the outside space at Aviva Studios. As you’ve come to expect from the peerless MIF crew, it’s all about live music, culture and the time-honoured urge to party.

From 4–20 July, this riverside space will host more than 160 Greater Manchester performers across 19 grassroots takeovers, plus a free daily programme that ranges from hip-hop theatre and high-camp cabaret to ceilidhs and queer line dancing.

And this isn’t a case of the same old faces. A hefty chunk of the 200+ musicians, DJs and performers were selected from an open call that drew in over 350 applications. The result is a lineup that’s regional, democratic and rooted in the city’s music infrastructure: Reform Radio, Homoelectric, Sounds From the Other City and more all get their moment on the main stage.

Highlights include Manchester MC Renee Stormz, experimental techno duo Transmission Towers, and the welcome return of Haçienda stalwart Dave Haslam. Look out, too, for the gloriously unpredictable Brown Wimpenny – an 11-piece folk riot – and FAFSWAG’s volcanic club night with Lady Shaka.

The family programme is well thought through, with Playhouse Project’s daytime rave for parents and kids, a Sports Day via Carlton Club, and an immersive Giant Bubble Show that’s more theatre than CBeebies.

Talks at The Social dig deeper into the Festival’s big-ticket commissions, while the adjacent Football: City, Art, United. exhibition – curated by Juan Mata and Hans Ulrich Obrist – is free to under-16s. If your legs give out, Bundobust, Superserve, and Trading Route are on food duty, with a one-off Shaun Moffat (Winsome) pizza collaboration raising funds for EatWell MCR on 6 July.

The whole thing is free to attend and more communal dancefloor than cultural showroom. If MIF is the main stage, Festival Square is the rehearsal room, beer garden and afterparty all in one. Expect music until midnight on weekdays and 2 am at weekends. Get down early. Stay late.