Manchester International Festival 2025 programme revealed with life-sized animal puppet parade, Royal Ballet first and star footballers' appearance - Manchester Evening News

Hundreds of people will take to the streets for the opening weekend of a huge, 18-day festival this summer.

Manchester International Festival (MIF) will see a parade of life-size puppet animals travel across the city when it returns to the region in July.

This morning, Factory International revealed the programme for the world-famous biennial arts festival inside its home, Aviva Studios. Taking place from Thursday, 3 July to Sunday, 20 July, this year will see MIF spread its wings beyond the city centre, with events in Rochdale and Wigan, and boast a plethora of artists from across the region.

For its 2025 programme, the Festival will partner with the Royal Ballet for the first time, and showcase the next stage of its collaboration with World Cup and Champions’ League winner Juan Mata alongside football greats including Eric Cantona and Edgar Davids.

It represents the first edition that MIF will be hosted within the fully operational Aviva Studios, home of Factory International, and the first under new Creative Director, Low Kee Hong. Taking place across the city and wider region, events, exhibitions and shows will also be held in venues including HOME and the Royal Exchange, as well as spilling out onto the city streets.

The buzzing heart will be Festival Square, which will return with a free programme of live music and performances including late-night DJs, bands and events outside Aviva Studios, with this year also flowing indoors to the Social. There will also be a talks programme, to be announced in due course.

Low Kee Hong, Creative Director at Factory International, said: “It has been an incredible journey building the MIF25 programme with such a diverse range of artists from around the world whose voices are ever more critical in these challenging times.

“They encourage us to lean into visions of other possible futures, encounter cosmologies unfamiliar to our own, and enter into worlds that propose a re-enchantment of dreaming to rediscover our ability for joy, hope and belief in each other and our communities to build these tomorrows we want to be part of.”

Organisers have said that MIF25 will continue to build and strengthen its relationship with the people of Manchester and the North West with nearly 800 local people and 600 children taking part in this year’s festival.

Meanwhile, continuing its work to 'make the festival as accessible as possible', 8,000 tickets will be available for £10 or less alongside free events across the Festival.

John McGrath, Chief Executive and Artistic Director at Factory International, added: “It has been such a delight to welcome Low Kee Hong to Manchester and to see his ideas for the future of MIF develop.

“With a global outlook and deep local engagement, the 2025 edition of Manchester International Festival, curated by Kee Hong, promises to be an exciting new step in the story of this unique festival of new work from the world’s great artists.

“Our wonderful new year-round home, Aviva Studios, will form a joyful centre to the festival, while we also partner with artists and organisations across Greater Manchester to ensure a festival for everyone.”

One of the most captivating events will be ‘The Herds’, which will unleash a large number of life-sized animal puppets to storm the streets of Manchester, Rochdale, and Wigan, transforming the city into a breathtaking, untamed spectacle to launch the Festival.

They will be joined by hundreds of participants from across Greater Manchester as part of a five-month project spanning Africa and Europe and highlighting the climate disaster.

Presented by The Walk Productions and led by Artistic Director Amir Nizar Zubai, it follows the international success of The Walk in 2021, which saw a 12-foot tall puppet of a Syrian refugee girl called Little Amal travel from Turkey to the UK.

Meanwhile, and in a first for MIF, the Festival will partner with The Royal Ballet to present a stage version of Christopher Isherwood’s ‘A Single Man’ at Aviva Studios.

Created by Jonathan Watkins with an original score from composer Jasmin Kent Rodgman and original songs from singer-songwriter John Grant, who will also perform live, the world premiere of A Single Man will see former Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson perform the central role.

Meanwhile, to create a lasting legacy, at Manchester Art Gallery in 2025 and again in 2125, An Inheritance will bring together a sprawling collection of knowledge, advice, jokes, memories and objects curated by over 500 primary school children from across every borough of Greater Manchester.

Working with artists Andy Field, Beckie Darlington and Rosabel Tan, these young people have been thinking about Manchester 100 years from now and what they can leave behind for its children - from a jar of honey (in case there are no bees in 2125) to advice on how to make friends, and everything in between.

To make sure the inheritance is passed down, key representatives from the city will attend a special ceremony where they will sign an oath written by the children promising to safeguard the collection for the next 100 years.

Football fans will also be catered for with ‘Football City, Art United’, an ambitious group exhibition at Aviva Studios which pairs 11 artists and footballs to create new work.

The project is a collaboration between former Manchester United star 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 will ‘expand the worlds of art and football and the cultural contributions both make to our daily lives’.

Sport and art will also collide when award-winning artist Juliet Ellis creates a dream-like installation called ‘A Symphony of Flesh and Bones’, drawing on the experiences of her father Lloyd, a champion bodybuilder, and her brother Antony, a former cage fighter.

Other highlights of the 2025 edition include a live collaborative performance from Michael Beard, dance company Chameleon and Manchester Camerata at Venture Arts pop-up open studio; ‘The Beginning of Knowledge’, the first solo exhibition of works by artist, Indigenous activist and leader of the Aimeni (White Heron) clan of the Uitoto people, Santiago Yahuarcanii, which will be presented by the Whitworth as part of MIF25; and the return of Balmy Arm, a youth-led art activism project which will join forces with the young people of Ukraine.

Elsewhere, HOME arts centre will welcome critically acclaimed queer, indigenous collective FAFSWAG with a stunning, digital art, live cultural ceremony and film programme; night-time venue Diecast will host acclaimed artist, choreographer and musician Blackhaine for a show taking inspiration from the landscapes of the North West; and Germaine Kruip’s new artwork - part sculptural installation, part soundscape, part immersive experience - will take over The Royal Northern College of Music.

This year’s festival will also see the world premiere of Liberation, a powerful new play by writer Ntombizodwa Nyoni, directed by Monique Touko. Commissioned and staged by the Royal Exchange Theatre 80 years after the Fifth Pan African Congress took place in Manchester in 1945, it will explore the private lives of activists who fought to liberate Africa, exploring why their story remains relevant in 2025.

Musically speaking, MIF25 will also host Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta collecting stories to create a thought-provoking sound installation at RKIX in Rochdale; Aviva Studios will host a world premiere by Rushil Ranjan (the Orchestral Qawwali Project) with Manchester Camerata and a very special guest; and Mary Ann Hobbs and Anna Phoebe will serve up a performance bringing together live DJing, sound design and voice, with violins, viola and live electronics.

Carrying on from this, this year’s music programme will also celebrate 20 years of Sounds from the Other City, and MIF and the Hallé will present Sounds of the East - an evening of music woven together by Eastern tradition and inspiration at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall under the baton of the Hallé’s new Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Kahchun Wong.

Cementing the festival’s long-term vision, the almost three-week event will also feature a new project by award-winning design studio Superflux, which will explore the ecological future of Aviva Studios’ post-industrial site. The collaboration will launch with an augmented reality experience on the Factory Settings app. Factory Settings is a free AR app where you choose a particular lens and inhabit experiences crafted by artists.

Commenting on the programme, councillor Garry Bridges, Deputy Leader, Manchester City Council said: “Manchester's worldwide reputation as a city of culture and the arts is in no small part thanks to Manchester International Festival and the ground-breaking new works it has presented every two years across the city since the very first festival back in 2007.

“This year's programme sounds just as brilliant with some amazing artists and creatives set to take over the city this July.

"As well as producing creative work that is consistently innovative, often spectacular, and always thought-provoking - much of which goes on to tour the world - the fantastic opportunities the festival also provides for local people of all ages to get involved, learn new skills, and play a part in its success, either as participants, staff, or as one of the festival's huge army of volunteers, make a real difference in the city and literally do help change lives for the good.”

Manchester International Festival will return for its 2025 edition from Thursday, 3 July to Sunday, 20 July 2025. More information on tickets and events can be found via the Factory International website here.