The best: Exhibitions to see in Manchester

The Science and Industry Museum’s latest exhibition invites visitors on an immersive journey through their senses. Operation Ouch! Brains, Bogies and You invites you to dive headfirst into a variety of hands-on experiments that will help shed light on the mysterious ways in which our bodies work.

Take a trip through an ear canal covered in gooey wax, squeeze past sticky snot and check in with Dr Chris, Dr X and Dr Ronx from the hit BBC Children’s series Operation Ouch! who appear throughout via video to help visitors understand the science behind the fun.

The sixth edition of Asia Triennial Manchester (ATM6) showcases a diverse body of works by more than 30 international artists and collectives.

Hosted by Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University, the curatorial framework of the multi-venue triennial is ‘transvaluation’. To transvalue means to transgress the logic of value and the systemic structures it legitimises. The triennial brings together a range of works which are linked by their creation of new ways to think about value, extending beyond economic value, efficiency and utility to establish new conceptions of social, sexual, ecological, indigenous and decolonial relations.

Manchester Art Gallery’s spellbinding exhibition Unpicking Couture celebrates groundbreaking moments from the world of fashion.

Told through a collection of stunning pieces from across the last century, the collection features unique creations from the history’s most influential designers and fashion houses, including Christian Dior, Azzedine Alaïa, Cristobal Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, Bruce Oldfield and Alexander McQueen.

A first-time collaboration between four female artists explores fragility, place and change at Salford Museum and Art Gallery.

Naomi Kendrick works mainly in drawing, examining fragility and strength, parental ageing and mortality. Lizzie King looks at the floor of the East Wing as a living, breathing thing in an immersive soundscape. Maggie Thompson and Susan Wright are printmakers examining how places change over time and how time is fragile — Maggie through archive photographs of Greengate and Sue directly from its floors, studying how these are shaped over time.

This is Jen Orpin’s sixth solo exhibition and second at Saul Hay Gallery, and marks the ten-year anniversary of the passing of her father. In 2015, after three months in the ICU, her dad peacefully passed away. For the three months he was in hospital, she travelled back and forth every week to Surrey from Manchester.

In 2018, she started painting her motorway bridges, the familiar landmarks that punctuated her journeys and informed where she was up to along the drive. This exhibition explores the connections we make to each other as well as to the landscape outside of the car window, not only to what’s in front, but when we look left and right. This is portrayed by a series of ‘Edge Land’ paintings capturing the topography that often goes unnoticed as our eyes are locked straight ahead.

Lowry 360 offers the chance to immerse themselves in the sights and sounds of LS Lowry’s iconic work, Going to the Match.

Created in collaboration with Barcelona’s renowned Immersive studio, Layers of Reality, visitors will be surrounded by a creative exploration, in super-high resolution, of a painting that ‘celebrates the excitement, anticipation, and ritual of going to a football match on a Saturday afternoon’.

The National Football Museum’s Black in the Game will provide a platform to share and celebrate football stories and landmark moments involving players with African and Caribbean heritage, including historic trailblazers and contemporary players in today’s game.

The exhibition is co-curated by a representative panel of footballers and academic leaders. A current preview of the exhibition is open in the museum’s Pitch Gallery, titled The Warm Up, it introduces the panel, including players like Kerry Davis, Bruce Dyer, Mary Phillip, Brian Deane and Nikita Parris, as well as respected figures within football, such as Leon Mann and Sagal Abdullahi.

In response to Manchester City Council’s commitment to becoming a zero-carbon city by 2038, this exhibition documents how the Manchester Craft & Design Centre’s makers are working individually and collectively towards a more sustainable future. To shape the collection, the venue has asked MCAD’s Makers to reflect on their creative practices and the steps they take towards a brighter future, by finishing the sentence: ‘By 2038, I would like to…’

Keep The Flame Burning, an ambitious exhibition co-produced by a group of working-class volunteers aged 16 to 25, is the culmination of a series of fortnightly workshops that took place between 2024 and 2025, The group worked together to explore the Library’s archive of Big Flame material — Big Flame was a libertarian socialist group that operated across the UK between 1970 and 1985.

The exhibition features film, audio and photography and displays some of the beautifully designed material from the library’s archive. Also on display is an original Big Flame banner used by the group during protests in the 1970s and 80s, and in response, a newly commissioned banner created by the group with local textile artist, Lou Miller.

Billed as the ultimate gaming experience, Power Up at the Science and Industry Museum invites guests to immerse themselves in the best video games from the last five decades. With more than 150 consoles to try from across the generations, there’s something for everyone, from Sonic to Street Fighter and Mario to Minecraft, plus a selection of games created in Manchester.

How To Read A Book is an exhibition concerned with language, writing, and memory. It also explores themes of neurodiversity, including dyslexia, by offering visitors an alternative way of approaching books and text.

Applying methods found in palmistry to lines found on the covers of well-read paperback books, this exhibition, led by artist and writer Stephen Emerseon, is an invitation to make art out of the everyday.

Gemini and Mercury Remastered is a visual odyssey that brings to life the pivotal, intimate moments from the dawn of human space exploration, during projects Mercury and Gemini. These early human space explorers also took the first, and still some of the finest, photographs of Earth ever captured on film.

For over half a century, almost every image publicly available was produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals. Until now…

The Beginning of Knowledge, the first international solo exhibition of works by Santiago Yahuarcani – artist, Indigenous activist and leader of the Aimeni (White Heron) clan of the Uitoto people will be presented by the Whitworth as part of MIF25.

Working from a remote Amazonia town in northern Peru, Santiago Yahuarcani creates large-scale, narrative-rich paintings exploring the relationship between the Uitoto people and the natural world. Using natural pigments and materials, Yahuarcani’s work exists outside of Western art history – instead harnessing the memories, history and wisdom of his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the sounds of the jungle, and Uitoto myths that explain the multiple configurations of the universe.

Originally launched to mark the reopening of the Pankhurst Centre, the Grade II* listed former home of Emmeline Pankhurst, At Home with the Pankhurst Family delves into the lives, legacies and the stories that led each to become fierce campaigners for women’s rights. The exhibition looks at both influences from within the family and the wider city which they called home.

The People’s History Museum documents and celebrates the revolutionaries, reformers, workers and voters who have shaped Manchester and beyond. Gallery One hones in on the period between Peterloo and post-war, while Gallery Two shares stories from post-war to the present day.

Recoverist Curators at The Whitworth invites a selection of people in recovery from substance abuse to re-narrate artworks from the gallery’s collection through a recoverist lens, sharing their aspirational stories of hope, fear, desires and dreams. Recoverist Curators supports Manchester-based visual arts charity, Portraits of Recovery, and the Whitworth’s collective mission for art as a means for positive social change

This October, esea contemporary presents Smooth Sailing, 一路順風, the first institutional solo exhibition by Marcos Kueh, an award-winning artist from Sarawak, Borneo Malaysia, known for his richly layered textile works.

Developed during his recent residency with esea contemporary, Smooth Sailing, 一路順風 explores the realities and afterlives of migration in search of a better future. The exhibition’s title draws from the Chinese phrase 一路順風 (yī lù shùn fēng), which literally means ‘may the wind be smooth along your entire journey.’ It is often used as a parting blessing, conveying hopes for safety, ease, and favourable conditions ahead – particularly for those embarking on uncertain paths

It Requires Getting Lost is the result of a unique partnership between the Roberts Institute of Art (RIA), Venture Arts and Castlefield Gallery. Three artists working in the North of England – Gregory Herbert, Malik Jama and Jocelyn McGregor – have been invited by the partner organisations to work in dialogue with one another and in response to major works from one of the UK’s most significant private collections, the David and Indrė Roberts Collection (managed by RIA). These major works, co-selected by all involved, will be featured in the exhibition.

The artists have together experienced one another’s sources of inspiration, including places and spaces where humanity and nature come into contact in unexpected ways. To date, these have included the Anderson boat lift, a wishing well in Alderley Edge and Yordas Cave in Ingleton. Guiding the artists’ research and overall exhibition are shared interests in the complex entanglement of human and non-human worlds, and testing the boundaries between the natural and artificial, making and material, intention and accident.

Spies, Lies and Deception is a free, family-friendly exhibition at IWM North about deception and espionage from the First World War right through to the present day.

Visitors can explore how audacious plots of deception have changed the course of conflict and the lives of those involved. The exhibition will cover the role of deception, how it was uncovered and the costs of being both the deceiver and the deceived.

The Science and Industry Museum has unveiled details of its next major exhibition, Horrible Science: Cosmic Chaos. Opening in February 2026, the museum will invite visitors to explore the wonders of the Solar System, venturing through a series of cosmic zones, walking in the shoes of astronauts, exploring the life-giving energy of the Sun, marvelling at mysterious moons and discovering far-off weird worlds.

Fresh off the back of the new BBC Children’s and Education TV Show, Horrible Science, the exhibition will encourage visitors to ‘do science the horrible way’ and join both scientists and supervillains to unveil the secrets of space.

A new exhibition showcasing contemporary Polish and Ukrainian digital art is on display now at Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Digital Arts.

Co-organised by the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Met, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, in partnership the 3D and Virtual Occurrences II Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Planetary Consciousness. Ecosystems of Care examines how digital tools can create new ways of both seeing the world and caring for it.

Going on display at the historic Victoria Baths, Helios has been created by internationally acclaimed artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter, the stunning sculpture presents the Sun in astonishing detail, using imagery captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

A specially commissioned sound composition by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson will also surround visitors in a rich, immersive atmosphere inspired by the rhythms and energy of solar activity.

A debut collaboration between Alana Lake and Deeqa Ismail combines large-scale print works, film and sculpture to reflect on power, protest, memory and survival at Castlefield Gallery.

The artists say: “Against a backdrop of climate crisis, social inequality, political unrest, and the erosion of human rights, the proposed exhibition asks: what is the role of the artist in times of crisis?”