Sankeys is finally making its return to Manchester, nine years after the Ancoats venue closed and left a sizeable hole in the city’s club culture.
The team behind the plans has confirmed it will open a brand-new 500-capacity space – the location of which is yet to be confirmed – in the city centre, with launch parties taking place on Friday 30th and Saturday 31st January 2026.
The new venue will reportedly bring back some of the rave spirit of Beehive Mill, with a basement-style setup, low capacity, and a focus on the music. Following the likes of Amber’s and more recently The Warehouse Project, phones are set to be banned, and there will be no VIP area.
This time around, the club is opening one night a week, on Saturdays only. Tribal Sessions, one of the city’s most beloved and influential club nights, will be returning as a monthly residency, while the programming will be pitched as a blend of emerging underground house, tech house and techno, with appearances from some of the classic Sankeys names that helped define its legacy.
Sankeys started life in 1994 as Sankeys Soap, a club space hewn from an old Soap Factory in Ancoats, long before the area was redeveloped and the north side of Great Ancoats Street was still largely a no-go area.
It built a global reputation with the likes of Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, Jeff Mills, Felix Da Housecat and Dave Clarke turning out for nights like the infamous Bugged Out. Meanwhile, the revered Tribal Sessions, with residents including Darius Syrossian, Greg Vickers and Jozef K, regularly welcomed DJs like Sasha, Deep Dish, Seth Troxler and Marco Carola.
Since the closure of the original venue in 2017, Sankeys hasn’t totally disappeared. The brand has continued to host nights around the UK, including recent events at Studio338 in London. It also held parties in Ibiza over several seasons in Playa d’en Bossa in the 2000s.
But this is the first time in nearly a decade that Manchester is getting its own dedicated Sankeys club again.
The LED matrix grid – one of the most recognisable elements from the Ancoats years – is being reinstated in the new space, alongside a dedicated chill-out room.
Original Sankeys founder and creative director David Vincent said: “What we’re creating is an intimate underground club with a chill out room. We will only be open one night a week on the Saturday. There will be no VIP or phones allowed on the dancefloor — everyone is a VIP. People need to stop taking pictures and start dancing to the beat.”
Early-access sign-ups are already open, with £20 pre-sale tickets available for the launch weekend and selected Saturdays running through to summer 2026. Tickets go on sale this Friday 28th November at 9am, and with the venue’s reduced capacity compared to the original, demand is expected to be high.
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