Five Manchester Plans for the Last Week of October
There’s nowhere in the UK quite like Manchester for sheer volume of things happening at any given moment. On a Tuesday night in the Northern Quarter you’ll find a basement venue running a sold-out jazz night, a comedy club that’s been going since the early 90s, and a new gallery opening that somehow has a queue. It’s a city that genuinely doesn’t know how to have a quiet one.
Late October is particularly good. The clocks have just gone back, everyone’s slightly unsure what to do with themselves, and Manchester responds by packing the calendar. Halloween events aside (and there are a lot of them this year, some genuinely excellent, some absolutely not worth leaving the house for), there’s live music, club nights, arts stuff, food markets, and the kind of grassroots gigs that remind you why people move here in the first place.
Halloween and the Surrounding Chaos
Look, if Halloween is your thing, Manchester does it properly. Depot Mayfield has been running large-scale immersive events for a few years now and they tend to be worth the ticket price, which is more than you can say for every city’s attempt at spooky season entertainment. Escape rooms around Ancoats and Salford have all gone full horror mode for October, some with genuinely unhinged theming. Albert Halls has a couple of club nights this weekend that’ll go on until something ungodly.
Even if you’re not that into Halloween, you’ll inevitably end up at something adjacent to it this week. That’s just how Manchester works in late October. Embrace it or book a table at Elnecot and ignore the whole thing.
Live Music Worth Your Time Right Now
The music calendar is strong at the moment. O2 Victoria Warehouse has a run of shows this week that spans grime, indie, and something the promoter describes as “post-club ambient” which could mean absolutely anything. Academy 2 has been quietly booking some of the best mid-sized touring acts of the year, and if you haven’t caught anything there recently you might be surprised by the quality.
Smaller venues are doing the heavy lifting too, actually. Soup Kitchen on Stevenson Square is one of the best 300-capacity rooms in the country and they rarely get the credit for it outside of people who go regularly. Band on the Wall has a couple of interesting shows this week including something involving a 12-piece band, which I’ll admit I’m curious about even if the logistics sound like a nightmare.
The easiest way to get a proper overview of everything running across venues this week is to use whats on in Manchester via Skiddle, which aggregates listings properly rather than making you click through a dozen different venue websites. Useful when there are genuinely 40 or 50 things worth considering on a given Saturday.
Beyond the Obvious
There’s a reasonable argument that the most interesting stuff in Manchester right now isn’t at the big venues. Afflecks has a market running this weekend with local makers doing jewellery, prints, and clothing. The Science and Industry Museum on Liverpool Road is free and has a new exhibition that’s been getting good word of mouth, though it’s worth booking a slot in advance because it gets busy.
If you’re after something a bit more low-key, Pollen Bakery in the NOMA neighbourhood does a weekend brunch situation that’s worth planning around, and the area itself has changed a lot in the last two years. Worth a wander even if you don’t have a plan.
Getting Around It All
One thing people underestimate about Manchester is how walkable the centre actually is. The gap between Piccadilly and the Northern Quarter is about seven minutes on foot. Ancoats to the Printworks is similar. You don’t need to be strategic about it the way you do in London, which genuinely changes how the night can go. You can decide to go somewhere different at 10pm and actually make it work.
Tram links out to Salford and over to Withington are decent enough if you’re looking beyond the city centre. Just check the last tram times before you commit to a late finish, because there’s nothing worse than a £22 Uber you didn’t budget for on a Tuesday.
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