Organisers behind Manchester Village Pride have admitted that the cost of booking the line-up for this year’s event has cost them £20k less than the fee for just one of last year’s headline artists.
Liquidation aftermath
Three months after last year’s event, it was announced that the company behind Manchester Pride had entered voluntary liquidation, leaving artists who appeared at the festival out of pocket. Efforts are still being made to recoup the money not paid to a number of artists.
The liquidation came following ‘challenging circumstances with persistent issues’ for Manchester Pride Limited (MPL). In 2023, the charity had already incurred losses after tax of £467k and more than £1.3m was owed to artists, suppliers and businesses following last year’s event.
New community-led event
Following Manchester Pride’s liquidation, a new Community Interest Company was set up to ensure the festival could go ahead in a revised capacity this year, spearheaded by key partners including Manchester City Council, Marketing Manchester, Cityco and Equity, as well as LGBTQ+ organisations and many Gay Village venues.
This year will mark the first ever Manchester Village Pride, which will be held over the August Bank Holiday weekend. Hailed as an ‘inclusive, safe and celebratory event', Manchester Village Pride will take place from Friday, August 28 to Monday, August 31 with a number of key features still being held including the parade and the candlelight vigil, and aimed to ‘reinforce the role of the Village as the heart of the celebration’.
Line-up and transparency
There will also be the Gay Village Party, which will feature a host of artists including Danny Beard, Nadine Coyle, Cascada and Kate Nash across the weekend. There will also be a wide range of local DJs, drag queens and artists fronting the bill too.
In a post regarding this year’s line-up on social media, Manchester Village Pride made the frank admission that the total booking fees for this year’s acts had cost significantly less than the 2025 festival, which saw headliners perform at Depot Mayfield instead of within the Gay Village itself.
The post said: “Transparency time! Booking this entire weekend of fabulous artists cost us £20k UNDER what was spent on a single headliner last year. This is what community Pride looks like!” No specific costs or artists were named in the post.
Following the announcement of the new Manchester Village Pride CIC earlier this year, Coun Pat Karney, a veteran Mancunian LGBTQ+ campaigner for decades, had urged new bosses to bring in smaller acts for the celebration rather than worldwide names demanding major fees. In November, Coun Karney said: “We should go back to home-made Pride. We don’t need to pay for Hollywood stars to come to Manchester at exorbitant rates. The artists in this city are fantastic. They really are. We will work very hard for a successful Pride in 2026.”
The cost of tickets for this year's Pride event are already down on previous years, with bosses saying the price of a wristband is being put towards paying for security, medical and welfare teams, clean-up operations and paying artists properly. Earlier this year, organisers signed an agreement with the Equity union in order to properly look after artists.
