The best: Exhibitions to see in Manchester

Running until late January at HOME, a new exhibition featuring works from ten global artists explores the cultures and identities that define Black diaspora.

Roots in the Sky marks the first institutional curatorial project by British-Nigerian artist Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, and brings together new and recent works by ten contemporary artists whose practices span the United States, Europe and West Africa.

Created by Chris Thompson, The Vessel reimagines PINK’s second-floor gallery as a shifting environment that sits between sculpture, archive and stage set, shaped by a fictional DIY collector who shapes the structure with their obsessions, playing with themese of value, taste, preservation, violence and power.

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.

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.

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.

Gallery Oldham presents a major new exhibition by leading contemporary artist Charlotte Hodes, opening on Sat 17 Jan and running until Sat 9 May. Titled Women Portraits: Trades & Professions, the free exhibition at the gallery on Greaves Street brings visibility to the often-overlooked contributions of women to professions historically dominated by men.

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.

Manchester Museum has opened ‘Africa Hub’, a new type of space that exposes the information the Museum does not know about the African collections it cares for.

Many of the collections on display have sat in storage for years, key details absent from their object labels, highlighting the gaps in museum records. In many cases, all that is known about the objects is the name of the donor or the institution from which they were acquired.

By taking an honest approach to the gaps in its knowledge, Manchester Museum says it hopes to start a process through which it can better understand the African collections it cares for and make collective decisions on how they can best inspire future generations.

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.

To mark 80 years of discovery and connection with the universe, Jodrell Bank invited the public to join us in a celebratory project – Cosmic Threads – a community quilt inspired by Jodrell Bank’s rich heritage and ground-breaking discoveries.

Working with textile artist Anne Kelly, this project encouraged participants to craft a 23 cm x 23 cm textile panel that shared their personal connections to the wonders of the cosmos, with the finished creations joining the landmark’s permanent collection.

A new dedicated display will be hosted in Jodrell’s Space Pavilion from Sat 24 Jan until Easter, after which, the artwork will take up a new permanent home within the venue.

For the very first time, Cosgrove Hall Films’ internationally acclaimed animation collection will go on permanent display in a new, purpose-built space at Sale Library.

Sale’s Waterside is proud custodian of the collection, which celebrates a unique chapter in British animation film and TV history featuring much-loved and iconic characters created by the award-winning Manchester studio.

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.

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?”

In what is the Whitworth’s first exhibition dedicated to Japanese prints in over 100 years, Beneath the Great Wave presents iconic artworks by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) in an exploration of the evolution of traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings.