The inaugural Manchester International Festival (MIF) has arrived in the city and it has quite the programme to discover. Working with partners regionally and across the globe, the wide-ranging programme of original new work by artists from around the world will take place from June 29 to July 16. MIF will take over venues and spaces throughout the city and at its much-anticipated new home, Aviva Studios, formerly Factory International, which opens its doors for the first time for the Festival, in advance of its official opening in October.
Visitors can expect a variety of art installations and exhibitions, alongside informative tours, moving film screenings and show-stopping musical, theatre and dance performances, as well as plenty of free things for you to get involved in. We’ve created a guide to let you know about everything that’s going on at this year’s MIF.
When does Manchester International Festival (MIF) take place?
Manchester International Festival (MIF) will take place from June 29 until July 16, 2023.
How much are tickets to Manchester International Festival events?
Some of the events at Manchester International Festival are free to attend, however for paid tickets these range from as low as £15 and as high as £35. The festival is also offering tickets at a reduced cost for those on low incomes, with some tickets also discounted for those under the age of 30. Tickets can be purchased on the Factory International website.
Festival Square
Taking place at a new riverside location Festival Square’s free open-air stage will host over 190 artists, bands, DJs and musicians all performing for free, as well as family entertainment and a wide variety of food and drink. With over 150 artists in the line-up hailing from Greater Manchester, the programme is massive celebration of sounds of the region.
Throughout MIF 2023, Festival Square will present takeovers from some of the city’s best promoters, club nights, collectives, venues and radio stations. Every lunchtime, Tuesday to Friday, the square will play host to experimental classical concerts.
An array of family entertainment will take place each weekend such as song and dance workshops, interactive music-making and storytelling. And Festival Square will close out in style on the final weekend, as fifty students from high schools across Greater Manchester present a joyful and celebratory fashion show inspired by Yayoi Kusama, featuring make-up artists, performers and their avant-garde creations. Plus, Jonathan Schofield and Skyliner will lead walking tours exploring some of the themes running throughout the MIF23 programme.
A variety of food and drink will be available at the hub of MIF23 including ARMR who will be serving up tasty plant-based Caribbean delights; Hip Hop Chip Shop bringing the finest fish, chips and mushy peas; Indian and Pakistani cuisine from Zouk; and Ginger’s Comfort Emporium will be making an appearance with their ice-creams and sorbets.
Art and exhibitions at Manchester International Festival
Ryan Gander: The Find – June 29 – July 16
Ryan Gander invites audiences to undertake a quest across the city in search of his latest artworks. Hundreds of thousands of collectable coins will be hiding in plain sight across Manchester, each embellished with words offering guidance on daily decisions. Left on park benches, walls, steps, in food courts and libraries, tucked away in parking ticket machines or between tram seats, Gander sets out an invitation for all of Manchester to go out and explore. With The Find, Ryan Gander injects mystery into people’s everyday encounters, encouraging them to see the world around them differently.
📍 Various Manchester locations
🎟️ Free
Tino Sehgal: This Entry – June 29 – July 16
The project kicks off at MIF23 with a world premiere of This entry – a new work by artist Tino Sehgal, made with the involvement of Juan Mata and presented at the National Football Museum (29 June – 5 July) and the Whitworth (7 – 16 July). Known for artworks composed using exclusively the human body, voice and social interaction, Tino has exhibited his work at the world’s biggest art galleries – from New York’s Guggenheim to London’s Tate Modern, Paris’ Palais de Tokyo and Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun. This entry is a playful choreographic exchange between a footballer, violinist, cyclist and singing dancer.
📍 National Football Museum, Urbis Building Cathedral Gardens, Todd St, M4 3BG (June 29 – July 5) | The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M15 6ER (July 7 – 16)
🎟️ Free
We Cut Through Dust – June 29 – July 16
A collaboration between Blast Theory and Manchester Street Poem, We Cut Through Dust takes audiences on a walk through the city into the future guided by a series of phone calls. Set in a world not too far from now, the walk starts at a location where your mobile phone triggers a giant mechanical sign to open, and the story to begin. Blast Theory is an artist group which makes interactive work exploring social and political questions, and Manchester Street Poem is a co-produced art collective whose work reflects the personal experiences of Manchester’s marginalised communities.
📍 Various Manchester locations
🎟️ Pay What You Decide – PWYD – £20, £10, £5, £3 or £0
Yayoi Kusama, You, Me and the Balloons – June 30 – August 28
A centrepiece of the Festival presented at Factory International’s flagship new venue, Yayoi Kusama’s You, Me and the Balloons will bring together three decades of the renowned Japanese artist’s spectacular inflatable artworks for the first time. Created especially for Factory International’s vast new warehouse space, You, Me and the Balloons will be Kusama’s largest ever immersive environment, featuring works over 10 metres tall. The exhibition will invite visitors to take an exhilarating journey through Kusama’s psychedelic creations including giant dolls, spectacular tendrilled landscapes and a vast constellation of polka-dot spheres.
📍 The Warehouse, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £15
Economics The Blockbuster: It’s Not Business As Usual – June 30 – October 22
At the Whitworth, Economics the Blockbuster: It’s Not Business As Usual presents a selection of extraordinary art projects that each operate as real-world economic systems. Together they propose new ways of ‘doing business’. Building on the Whitworth’s ongoing commitment to being a useful museum driven by a civic purpose, this project addresses economics as a social and financial set of relations that we all take part in. From a community-led drinks company to a crypto-financed youth agency, the exhibition includes new artist commissions, merchandise with a purpose, business collaborations and a live programme of talks and activities.
📍 The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M15 6ER
🎟️ Free
Sonics, Stories and Scenes of the Diaspora – July 1
From Metz ‘n’ Trix to Manara, Asian Dub Foundation to UK Apache, M.I.A to Joy Crookes, South Asian diaspora impacts on the UK music scene and wider culture are immeasurable. For this day-long takeover of Manchester Museum’s South Asia Gallery, SEEN Magazine shine a light on this heritage and celebrate the sounds of global majority and South Asian diaspora artists making waves today. Building on themes featured in the Manchester Museum’s ground-breaking new South Asia Gallery, the event features live performances, DJ sets, screenings and panel discussions.
📍 Manchester Museum, Oxford Road, M13 9PL
🎟️ Free but reservation required
Balmy Army – July 1 – 15
Over the past year young people, artists, madpride organisers, radical dreamers and disability justice doers have come together for mental health support that works. Balmy Army is art and activism rolled into one, from sharing poetry to making placards, to social media takeovers and mass acts of civil disobedience. The gallery at HOME is the Balmy Army’s space to play and plan during the Festival. There are also a number of events in the works which anyone is welcome to join – including a rally through the streets of the city on the last weekend of the Festival celebrating young people making change. Balmy Army reminds us that mental health isn’t just about individuals – and that community, care and creativity are some of our greatest ways to heal.
📍 HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN
🎟️ Free
Benji Reid: Find Your Eyes – July 12 – 16
Known for award-winning Afro-futurist images that seem to defy gravity, Benji Reid invites us to watch him at play as he creates live photography in this genre-bending show, Find Your Eyes. A choreo-photolist, Benji combines photography, choreography and theatre to make striking and surreal images which speak to his experiences as a Black man in the UK today. The world premiere of his new show at MIF23 exposes the making of this work – a behind-the-scenes look at Benji’s life and practice where the stage becomes a studio. Choreographing three performers, Benji will create live photographs in front of an audience at Manchester Academy, interlacing the action with recollection of resonant moments from his life.
📍 Manchester Academy 1, Oxford Road, M13 9PR
🎟️ Standard tickets £26
50 Hours of Freedom – July 14
In celebration of International Non-Binary People’s Day, Contact and Manchester International Festival are bringing together three local, non-binary artists to create a new piece of work – and you’re invited to the sharing! This year, Contact celebrates its 50-year anniversary so the artists will have 50 hours to make their new piece. During the 50-hour lock-in in the Contact building, a local non-binary trio will be given a brief from award-winning international artist, Danez Smith and they will then share this new work with a live audience.
📍 Space 1, Contact, Oxford Road, M15 6JA
🎟️ Standard tickets £20
Theatre performances at Manchester International Festival
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions – June 28 – July 2
Composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman present a world premiere musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta’s cult 1977 book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions at HOME, reimagining the history of the world through a queer lens with a cast of actors, singers and musicians. The ultimate anarchic bedtime story in which fables and myths celebrate queer community and conjure up a world on the brink of revolution with battle re-enactments, cheerleading, and all-night raves mixed with lute songs and court dances.
📍Theatre 1, HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN
🎟️ Standard tickets £28
Untitled F*ck M*ss S**gon Play – June 29 – July 16
Winner of the inaugural Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2019, International Award, Kimber Lee’s untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play makes its world premiere directed by Roy Alexander Weise (The Mountaintop) and designed by Moi Tran for the Royal Exchange Theatre as part of MIF23. The anticipated production, co-produced with the Young Vic and Headlong, jumps through time – wriggling inside of and then exploding lifetimes of repeating Asian stereotypes, wrestling history for the right to control your own narrative in a world that thinks it can tell you who you are.
📍 Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann’s Square, M2 7DH
🎟️ Standard tickets from £22
They – July 5 – 9
Another cult classic text from 1977 is brought to life at MIF23 by Maxine Peake, Sarah Frankcom and Imogen Knight, who will adapt They, Kay Dick’s dystopian masterpiece, with a live, afterhours performance by Peake inside the iconic John Rylands Library. They is the trio’s latest Festival collaboration, following The Masque of Anarchy, The Skriker and The Nico Project, which all celebrated radical acts and artists. The project marks the group’s first production as the newly-formed company MAAT – a collective adventure to make new work in conversation with Music, Art, Activism and Theatre.
📍 John Rylands Library, 150 Deansgate, M3 3EH
🎟️ Standard tickets £30
All Right. Good Night. – July 6 – 8
One of the biggest mysteries in the history of modern travel merges with a personal story from Helgard Haug, director and co-founder of the award-winning German theatre group Rimini Protokoll in All right. Good night. (6-8 July). In 2014, a flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members took off from Kuala Lumpur, heading towards Beijing, but the plane disappeared from radar. Shortly after the disappearance, Haug’s own father developed dementia. This powerful UK premiere is a meditation on disappearance, loss and how to deal with uncertainty. Performed live at HOME with a haunting contemporary score from Barbara Morgenstern and arranger Davor Vincze.
📍Theatre 1, HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN
🎟️ Standard tickets £28
Music performances at Manchester International Festival
Kagami – June 29 – July 9
A rich performance programme includes Kagami, a unique collaboration between award-winning musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tin Drum, the world’s premiere mixed reality content production studio. Drawing on a body of work spanning electronic to classical composition and performance, Kagami represents a new kind of concert, fusing dimensional moving photography with the real world to create a never-before-experienced mixed reality presentation. Audiences will wear optically-transparent devices to view the virtual Sakamoto performing on a piano alongside dimensional art aligned with the music, and are free to wander and explore during the hour-long event at Versa Manchester Studios.
📍 Versa Manchester Studios, 3 Goods Yard Street, M3 3BG
🎟️ Standard tickets £28
Angélique Kidjo and Guests – July 4
Over the past four decades, Angélique Kidjo has cemented her status as one of the most extraordinary voices in international music. With four Grammy Awards under her belt, she’s known for her eclectic sound and endless creative spirit combining Beninese and West African music with Afrobeat, Afro-pop, dancehall, hip-hop and alt-R&B. Her show at MIF23 is her first in Manchester for ten years and, in the true spirit of collaboration, she’ll be joined by some of the best emerging talent from the city: OneDa, Layfullstop and Ellen Beth Abdi.
📍 The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £25
AFRODEUTSCHE with Manchester Camerata – July 5
Manchester’s very own polymath DJ, composer and producer AFRODEUTSCHE premieres a new composition at MIF23. Merging contemporary classical, techno, house and electro, AFRODEUTSCHE is no stranger to pushing boundaries and making magic with a blend of genres. This brand-new work is performed by Manchester Camerata – one of the UK’s most adventurous orchestras. The composition is brought to life by internationally renowned conductor Robert Ames – who’s known for championing new music and working with some of the most exciting artists around today.
📍 The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £25
Justin Vivian Bond: One Night in Trans Vegas – July 6
Trans pioneer and icon of the cabaret scene, Justin Vivian Bond is touching down in Manchester for one night only with a raucous and seductive evening of songs and stories – along with some very special guests. One Night In Trans Vegas sees MIF team up with Trans Creative, the UK’s leading trans arts company, for the grand finale of their 2023 Festival. Culminating in a trans-led takeover of Festival Square, Viv’s appearance is the jewel in the crown of a night of trans joy and excellence.
📍 The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £22
Sonic Geography – July 7
Sonic Geography is a performance featuring new music inspired by the climate crisis. Lose yourself in a world premiere by Grammy Award-winning composer John Luther Adams, played by pianist Ralph Van Raat alongside new commissions by Ailís Ní Ríain and Alissa Firsova, all performed by the BBC Philharmonic and conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni. Encompassing stillness and movement, peaks and depths – these are the sounds of environments that will live on long after humans. A performance where you can easily get lost in time and music.
📍 Bridgewater Hall, Mosley Street, M2 3WS
🎟️ Standard tickets £30
Anna Meredith: FIBS with the RCNM Festival Orchestra – July 7
Swapping concert halls for Manchester’s iconic Depot Mayfield, composer, producer and performer Anna Meredith and her band are joined by the Royal Northern College of Music Festival Orchestra for this genre-bending show conducted by Robert Ames. Bringing together contemporary classical, art pop, techno and experimental rock, FIBS is infectious, joyous and exhilarating. With new arrangements by Ben Corrigan and Robert Ames, this is music made for a giant space. Arrive early for a specially-selected set featuring some of the RNCM’s emerging classical/pop crossover artists, as the College celebrates five decades of innovative music-making.
📍Depot Mayfield, 11 Baring Street, M1 2PY
🎟️ Standard tickets £25
Sanam Marvi – July 8
Making her MIF debut, renowned Pakistani folk singer Sanam Marvi sings in Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi and Saraiki. The singer offers a uniquely beautiful interpretation of Sufi poetry supported by an unbelievable vocal range. Sanam spent her childhood singing at festivals and shrines across Pakistan and in 2009, a breakout performance on national television turned her into an overnight sensation. Her music has reached Bollywood and earned her recognition from UNESCO and Pakistan’s highest civilian award.
📍The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets start from £35
Manchester Collective and Slung Low: Noah’s Flood – July 9
In this vibrant staging of Benjamin Britten’s community opera, director Alan Lane tells a story of hope and survival, featuring Lemn Sissay live as the voice of God and 180 schoolchildren as every bird and beast under the sun. When Britten wrote this show, he was determined to create parts for as many performers as possible – no matter their musical experience. True to this vision, a cast of world-class musicians will join forces with an army of performers from communities in Holbeck and Manchester to bring this ancient story to life. Alongside the orchestra of Manchester Collective, the score features a motley crew of recorders, wind machines, mugs that you hit with sticks, bugles, an organ and a trio of belting hymns for everyone to join in with.
📍Depot Mayfield, 11 Baring Street, M1 2PY
🎟️ Standard tickets £25
The Comet is Coming and Daisy Dickinson present Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam – July 12
Bringing together the unified powers of Danalogue, Betamax and Shabaka, The Comet is Coming is a cosmic alignment of inter-stellar talents, featuring synth, drums and saxophone. For this very special performance at MIF – their last in Manchester before the band return to near-Earth orbit for a break from touring – they’re joined by Daisy Dickinson, ground-breaking visual artist and filmmaker. Together they present Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam – a unique collision between the band’s cosmic sounds and Dickinson’s transcendent visuals – specially commissioned for MIF23.
📍The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £25
Alison Goldfrapp – July 14
The magnetic songwriter, vocalist, performer and producer set the bar for synth-pop in the twenty-first century. Never shy of innovation, Alison Goldfrapp returns to MIF with her iconic modern sound. Fever – her latest release, a club collaboration with house legend Paul Woolford – is a sweat-inducing future club classic made for the dancefloor. Pure euphoria is on the cards as Alison Goldfrapp brings her shimmering and explosive energy to MIF23, following her sell-out show at the 2013 Festival.
📍The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £27.50
Desi Factory – July 15
Enjoy a night of partying and discovery, as Manchester’s own Sam Malik curates a night of British South Asian talent to mark the closing weekend of MIF23. Expect R&B-infused tracks with a signal to Bollywood from headliner Zack Knight, who has opened shows for Taio Cruz and Jessie J. Support comes from melodic singer-songwriter Ezu, BBC Asian Network’s legendary DJ Bobby Friction and Bambi Bains – a trailblazer in the UK’s Desi R&B and Bhangra scene, as well as Manchester’s own Joash, Kami Kane, Luqy and Freezy, all hosted by TV & Radio personality Nikita Kanda.
📍The Hall, Aviva Studios, Water Street, M3 4JQ
🎟️ Standard tickets £25
Dance performances at Manchester International Festival
R.O.S.E : L-E-V and Young with Ben UFO – June 13 – 16
Dance company L-E-V and London-based record label Young come together to celebrate the freedom, energy and intimacy that runs through club culture in a night of dance and music in Manchester’s iconic New Century Hall night club. R.O.S.E (13-16 July) brings the dark hedonism of Sharon Eyal’s choreography and artistry of the L-E-V dancers off the stage and onto the dancefloor alongside new music curated by Young for L-E-V. Ben UFO DJs throughout.
📍 New Century Hall, 34 Hanover Street, M4 4AH
🎟️ Standard tickets range from £18-£22