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.

Featuring an immersive installation, audio, film and interactive elements, as well as an array of natural history collections and artworks, Wild is a stunning exploration of our precarious but optimistic dynamic with the natural world.

The collection transports visitors across a captivating, diverse global topography and a wide array of voices, from Aboriginal elders to academic researchers, to champion the innovative methods used to restore biodiversity and shape a sustainable future environment while challenging how we think about and interact with nature.

Castlefield Gallery will launch an ambitious and truly unique exhibition of new work inspired by the University of Salford’s groundbreaking Energy House 2.0 facilities.

Energy House is dedicated to pioneering research on how carbon-neutral and net-zero homes will be built. Within the space is a chamber that can accommodate two full-sized detached houses and simulate climatic conditions including wind, rain, snow, solar radiation and extreme temperatures.

Arists Mishka Henner and Emily Speed each spent 18-month residencies with Energy House 2.0. This exhibition is the culmination of that experience, with both artists responding to their time there in vastly different mediums.

The iconic Jodrell Bank provides a fitting backdrop to the prestigious Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. The annual competition features some of the world’s greatest space photography, with amateurs and professionals alike contributing.

Photographers from across the globe compete to take home the coveted title, and this year’s winner Andromeda, Unexpected, can be viewed alongside many more runners-up and other highly commended images.

This landmark exhibition at the Whitworth features more than 90 women artists and collectives whose ideas helped fuel the women’s liberation movement during a period of significant social, economic and political change.

Women in Revolt! explores six key themes. These include maternal and domestic experiences, anti-racist and LGBTQ+ activism, Greenham Common and the peace movement, and punk and independent music.

For seven weeks of the exhibition run, visitors will be able to see Bobby Baker’s An Edible Family in a Mobile Home, a sculptural installation of delicious edible life-size family figures formed from cake and biscuit (On display Fri 7 Mar – Sun 20 Apr).

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.

Marking one year since the passing of Salford’s own Harold Riley, Salford Museum & Art Gallery fittingly hosts a career-spanning exhibition which unites a variety of Harold’s many disciplines and subject matter, including painting, drawing, digital fusions and photography.

The celebration aims to tell the story of the man behind the art, showing works that portray places and people that were important to him. There are quotes from the artist that help illustrate the person Harold was, the legacy that he leaves behind, and the strong connection he had with the City of Salford.

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’.

Football City, Art United. is an ambitious group exhibition at Aviva Studios which pairs 11 artists and footballs to create new work as part of this year’s Manchester International Festival.

The project is a collaboration between World Cup and Champions’ League winner Juan Mata, renowned curator and Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist and writer Josh Willdigg. From interactive play arenas and sound installations to animation and sculpture, Football City, Art United expands the worlds of art and football and the cultural contributions both make to our daily lives.

Coming in October 2025, 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.

A Riot in Three Acts comes to HOME  from award-winning artist, filmmaker and composer Imran Perretta, combining sound, sculpture and performance.

The large-scale installation reflects on the narratives of the UK’s urban spaces, social inequality and racial violence. Using tropes and techniques of cinema, in the form of an ‘expansive film set’ and cinematic score, Perretta explores riots and civil uprisings that have occurred in response to systemic injustice experienced by marginalised communities.

The Portico’s latest exhibition will examine Britain’s complex colonial relations with China and Hong Kong.

Echoes invites audiences to engage with the Portico Library’s book collection and the communities who are reclaiming the colonial narrative, centring on the voices of five Critical Friends of Portico who have co-created the exhibition.

Their exploration has concentrated on Manchester’s Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora, and their reading of the collection delves into the retention and adaptation of identity, place and purpose, particularly through language, landscape, and calendar customs such as Lunar New Year celebrations.

Stories — Brought to Life is a collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, bringing some of the institution’s most beloved paintings to MediaCity to be displayed in an immersive exhibition space.

The collection will explore the fascinating lives of people featured in the Gallery’s Collection whose stories have shaped the UK’s history and culture, from the Tudor period to the present day, from cultural icons to boundary-pushing activists both past and present.

Included in the display are the likes of Grayson Perry, Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Emmeline Pankhurst, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare and more.

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.