Manchester's best night clubs

Starting off strong – the alphabet just works like that – is 42’s. It’s not known for it’s boundary-pushing programme or superstar DJs, there’s enough of that in other corners of the city, 42s is the go-to location for cheap, cheap drinks and crowd-pleasing bangers. A rite of passage for students who come to the city, it holds a firm place in the hearts, but perhaps not the memories, of most Mancs.

One of the most exciting venues in Manchester, Amber’s has a radical premise: you can see some of the best DJs around right in the city centre (Circle Square to be precise), but they aren’t announced until a few days before the gigs. They also have a strict, Berlin-style ‘no phones’ policy, and have a track record for booking the very best from all corners of the electronic music universe since they opened in 2024. With a capacity of 1000, it’s a vast, minimal space, as you might expect. Keep an eye on their social media for cryptic teasers about their latest bookings.

Not technically a club, but certainly capable of facilitating a sizeable night out, The Blues Kitchen is everything you could want in terms of food, drinks, live music and dancing late into the night, under one decadently art deco roof. Live music comes from a spectacularly eclectic gig calendar, often playing host to the great and good of the blues, soul and RnB universe, while their house band keeps the party going into the early hours. The decor is stand-out too. Think beautiful vintage tiles, stained glass salvaged from an abandoned church in Queens, New York, thrift store monkey lamps and classic American dive bar ephemera. Take a look at their listings, or just roll the dice and turn up for one of the liveliest nights of your life.

Once a mansion called Rowan Lodge in the depths of leafy Whalley Range, The Carton Club is a community-run space that plays host to a consistently high calibre of events with a truly ‘come all’ ethos. And while there’s plenty of yoga, poetry talks and car boot sales as you might expect, you’re just as likely to find underground and left field club nights, alongside indie discos and karaoke parties. They’re pretty ad hoc, but well worth taking a chance on.  

What looks from outside like a traditional boozer on Cheetham Hill Road, The Derby Brewery Arms is quietly one of the UK’s most radical venues. The Joseph Holt pub is a defining part of Cheetham Hill’s so-called Strange Quarter, where Strangeways Prison is an unexpected backdrop to some of the city’s most interesting party culture. A meeting place for Manchester’s queer community, it plays host to some of the city’s most transgressive club nights, from the likes of Meat Free, Filth and Bent Hedonism. The DBA really isn’t like anywhere else: weird, wonderful, welcoming. Oh, and you can still pop in for a pint and a game of pool if you like.

A go-to for students and music lovers alike, The Deaf Institute opened its doors in its current iteration back in 2008. Before that it was the Manchester Adult Deaf and Dumb Institute, founded in 1824, hence the building’s impressive Gothic facade and unusual name. Spanning three floors, the venue wears lots of different hats, but as a club it’s known for its raucous, sweaty indie, rock and 80s pop night. Essentially, head down for your fill of guilty pleasures and shameless bangers.

Hidden host a vast array of roof parties, garden parties, and every other party in-between, playing host to some of the best DJs in the world in the process. With such a limited capacity to this place, it always feels really intimate – just as if you’re having a big mucky night in your own living room, minus complaining neighbours. It’s just a stone’s throw from The White Hotel and The DBA, placing it firmly within what’s become known, extremely accurately, as The Strange Quarter.

With the tagline ‘built in 1993, revamped in 2021’ all three floors of Joshua Brooks have seen a fair few iterations of the Manchester party scene over the last three decades. There’s a bar, a sun-trap terrace and a loft space for comedy, but where it really happens is in the basement. Their policy is ‘if it’s club-ready and credible, it belongs here’. Speaking of credibility, they’ve hosted sets from the likes of Goldie, Sam Divine, Dennis Ferrer, Danny Tenaglia, Mason Collective, and Josh Baker. Simply put, they don’t mess around. 

Depot Mayfield is a 10,000 capacity venue in Manchester’s historic former railway station. If that doesn’t quite express the scale of the place: It’s huge. A vast cavern of brick, concrete and metal. Probably best known as the most recent home of the enduringly popular Warehouse Project series of megaraves, it also plays host to a whole host of cultural events like theatre productions and fashion shows. It’s a space that has to be seen to be believed.

First opening in 2023 as a temporary, summer-long experiment, Progress Centre in Ardwick has become a permanent feature on the Manchester party scene. The space is essentially a very creative use of a cluster of otherwise disused industrial buildings, with most of the ‘club’ an open-air car park (though the dancefloor is covered). Don’t expect glam loos, but do expect huge global DJs from all corners of the techno, house, R&B, garage and jungle universes. The space has seen the likes of Palms Trax, Ben UFO and Shy FX, as well as day parties from beloved collectives like SubCulture, FREAK and Hit & Run.

That sweet spot between a bar and a club, renae is the long-planned collaboration between Brad (Whiskey Jar, Alabama’s) and Harris, whose CV spans Trof, Deaf Institute, Gorilla and Soap Street Pizza. Open on Thomas Street in a former photography studio, it’s a music-first bar inspired by global listening bar culture and named after French jazz pianist René Urtreger. By day, it doubles as a record shop with listening stations and vinyl curated by Patrick Ryder of Talking Drums. By night, it transforms into a focused listening space, powered by a heavyweight L-Acoustics sound system and a (very) high-end rotary mixer, with events, DJs and community firmly at its core.

And lo, after a spell in the wilderness, Sankeys returned to Manchester, taking up residence in what was formerly Zoo/Bread Shed, off Oxford Road. The club that cut its teeth back when Ancoats was a dark and scary place to hang out (hard to believe), is a dark box illuminated by state-of-the-art lighting and lifted up by some of the best DJs in the world swinging by, from veterans who graced the original club’s turntables to new school talent.

A bit of a no-brainer when it comes to Northern Quarter nights out, SOUP strikes a balance between making painfully cool, must-see booking, and hosting high calibre local DJs in the bar area, so you can just turn up on any given weekend and hear something great. They used to serve actual soup, they don’t anymore, but this super minimal, always excellent space has been doing it longer than most.

Manchester’s music scene moves fast, but Stage & Radio has outlasted most of it. The city centre’s oldest nightlife address, it began life in 1946 as Club 43, welcoming jazz royalty like Ronnie Scott, before later hosting early gigs from Muse and Coldplay – the latter famously spotted here by a Universal Records scout. After stints as everything from live venue to salsa bar, it re-emerged in its current form in 2016. Today, it spans three distinct spaces plus a terrace: relaxed drinks upstairs, a premium, seated Attic with table service, and a basement powered by a VOID sound system, delivering one of the city’s best club atmospheres.

Entirely synonymous with the city’s eccentric underground, The White Hotel has been keeping the party going in a disused MOT garage opposite Strangeways prison for over a decade now, which is some feat. From the outside, the building looks quite foreboding – which is a sure sign of excellent things to come. Inside is a mix of industrial shabbiness and religious ephemera: shrines, crucifixes, arthouse films projected on the walls, that sort of thing. The former MOT inspection pit has been repurposed into a really quite good cocktail bar, of a far higher quality that the revellers would notice, or necessarily deserve. The programming is a mix of alternative gigs and underground club nights from the city’s best, like Now Wave, High Hoops, Meat Free – arguably the best of the best. Worth the journey over into Salford, and then some.

XLR is an independent, 200-capacity club on Wilmslow Road in Withington, built around a clear focus on sound, community and affordability. Founded by Chris Hindle, the venue operates on an occasionally eyebrow-raising bring-your-own-booze model, using a corkage-style system that allows guests to bring limited amounts of alcohol while keeping ticket prices fair. A Funktion-One soundsystem underpins a weekly programme of club nights, disco, headline DJs and grassroots showcases. Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it.