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Manchester Day is, unsurprisingly, one of the best times to head out in the northern city and enjoy everything it has to offer.
This year, it is taking place on Sunday July 26th and will see the city be transformed, with plenty of music performances, parades and dance shows filling the streets.
Whether you’re a local or tourist, Manchester Day is great to be part of, seeing the city come alive in the festivities.
After Manchester was invited to be part of Barcelona’s La Merce Festival last September, performers will make their way from Spain for this year’s event.
Performing Catalan dances and playing authentic music, it will give Manchester Day 2026 a distinctive Spanish feel.
There will also be the mini Manchester Day parade, which will have a book theme this year, continuing to celebrate the National Year of Reading.
This follows the See Myself in Books Festival, which took place in March, showcasing diversity in novels and inspiring children to develop a love for reading.
The events will be organised by outdoor arts company Walk The Plank, who will be busy putting together all the exciting parades, performances, and spectacles at the end of July.
A great way to really celebrate everything Manchester related is to look back at its food heritage.
Its cuisine is predominantly based around hearty ingredients, due to its working class roots, with the sprinkling of multi-cultural flavours, thanks to its increasingly diverse population.
Here are some of Manchester’s most famous dishes you need to give a go:
Before you get too excited, Manchester caviar refers to mushy peas, not a fancy canape. The dish, with its distinctive green colour, is made from boiled marrowfat peas and is the perfect accompaniment to fish and chips.
Every region has their own version of a stew, and for the north west, it is the Lancashire hot pot. This is made by slowly cooking lamb or mutton for a long time, and sometimes even lamb kidneys. It is then covered with sliced potatoes and baked some more.
Manchester’s equivalent to an empanada is its rag pudding. This dish involves wrapping minced meat and onions in suet pastry and either boiling or steaming it. Although this isn’t as common as it used to be, you can still often find rag pudding in some local butchers.
A pasty barm would have been a standard lunch for any industrial worker, consisting of a buttered bread roll filled with a meat and potato pasty. The bap, which originated in Bolton, would have kept you full all day long, no doubt!
A true Mancunian would argue that Eccles cakes are from Salford, and therefore, not Manchester, but they have become so popular, you’ll find them in most bakeries across both cities these days.
This pudding is made with flaky pastry, butter, sugar and currants, and flavoured with spices.
Despite being so popular, these cakes are still handmade to ensure they taste just as good today as they always have.
They are best eaten warmed up; however, they come with a warning not to put in the microwave, as they have been known to cause a few explosions in the past, thanks to their high sugar content.
Sticking with the city’s most famous puddings, the Manchester tart is definitely one to try. This is made from a shortcrust pastry base, which is then filled with raspberry jam and a custard filling, with desiccated coconut sprinkled on the top.
This became one of the most common school dinner desserts during the 1940s and ‘50s, before falling out of favour. However, nostalgia for the sweet, custardy pudding has meant its popularity has seen a resurgence of late, and you might find it on a few menus around the city.
It isn’t just dishes from olden times that have become quintessentially Mancunian, but more recent ones too.
These tend to be influenced by the diverse population of the city, with 21 per cent having Asian origin and 12 per cent having black heritage.
Consequently, there are so many spices, flavours, and ingredients across every street, offering visitors a huge variety in dishes.
For instance, ‘rice and three’ was a meal that was created in the Northern Quarter during the 1980s and consists of rice with a choice of three curries. This was inspired by South Asian cuisine, with the dish being created to serve this growing community at the time.
It is based on Thali cooking, which refers to a portion of rice and naan and different types of curries, daals and yoghurts. ‘Rice and three’, however, was a much simpler version of this, while still allowing South Asians to enjoy flavours they were familiar with.
Over the last 40 years, its popularity has reached all the different communities in Manchester, becoming one of the city’s most sought after dishes.
Another ethnic food that was actually created in Manchester is cheesy keema and chips, which brings together minced lamb, flavoured with South Asian spices, with melted cheddar cheese and fries.
Such is the variety of the city’s dishes, it is worth taking a food walking tour to experience all the different aromas and flavours, particularly on Manchester Day.
