Turkish girl group Manifest have said they hope their UK arena debut will help them go global.
The six-member band, Esin Bahat, Hilal Yelekci, Lidya Pınar, Mina Solak, Sueda Uluca, and Zeynep Sude Oktay, will perform their first UK arena show on Friday at Wembley in London.
It comes days after the group released their first English-speaking single, Tralala, with an accompanying music video shot in London.
A special song blending cultures
Speaking to the Press Association news agency, Oktay said: “Tralala is a very special song for us because we blended global pop sound with some Turkish instruments like kemence and darbuka.
“It’s a really good step for us to being a global (group) because we also want to represent our culture.”
The group was formed on the Turkish talent show Big5 in 2025, after each member auditioned separately. They won the series after the judges decided to expand the group from five to six members.
Name inspired by positive thinking
During the competition the members would regularly “manifest” different things to encourage themselves, so when it came to choosing a name for the band they knew the word felt right.
Yelekci said: “There are always obstacles when you want to achieve something and we had a lot of them.
“We’re just figuring out what’s come next. We just trust the process.”
Uluca described the group as being like a “harmony of different colours” with each member adding something new and individual to the band.
Bringing Turkish melodies to global audiences
She also hopes audiences will start to sing in Turkish despite not speaking the language, in a way similar to Spanish superstar Rosalia and her music.
“We didn’t want to sound British, because we’re not, but bring the Turkish melodies with English pronunciation,” she said.
“We would like to make people sing in Turkish. So that’s one of our manifests.”
Because of the different members’ influences, the music style is “vibrant” and “edgy” according to Pinar, who said they like to use different genres to create something different.
Yelekci said: “We are very different from each other.
“People can see us like different types of energy and woman power, and we can bring all the identities together.”
Festival and documentary
This summer, Manifest launched the second edition of their very own Manifestival – a music and arts festival curated by the band that they headlined and organised.
The group released their debut album Manifestival in 2025 which was accompanied by their own music and arts festival with the same name.
A six-part Netflix documentary is in production, following the group as they make their international arena headline debut at London’s Ovo Arena Wembley on Friday October.
