Make a plan for match day with the best places to watch the Euros in Manchester. Our starting eleven includes our favourite Manchester sports bars as well as all-rounder venues that show the football live on big screens. They’ve all got a winning atmosphere and decent food and drink to console yourself with, just in case.
There’s options for if you want to soak up the sun and the sporting action at the same time. Plus we’ve got places that do private hire bookings, and big venues that recreate the roar of the terraces with a jubilant match day mood.
And it’s not just the footy. From the Olympics to Wimbledon, and from F1 to NFL, and rugby to race meets, this is where to watch live sport in Manchester all year round. Get your drinking arm in training now.
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Book Now Salford Quays
11 Central
11 Central is another venture for Seven Bro7hers, only this time their Sis4ers are on board too so the bar is a fantastic mix of craft beer and craft gin.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
AO Arena
If you’re in Manchester to see a big name music act, chances are you’re seeing it at the AO Arena.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
Atlas Bar
Atlas Bar is known as one of the originals of Manchester’s modern cafe-bar scene. And for its extensive collection of gins – over 570 varieties and counting.
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Manchester City Centre
Bierkeller
If dancing on tables with two-pint steins is what you’re after, head to Bierkeller in The Printworks. This Bavarian-themed bar is best known for its live oompah bands which play at weekends. It’s a raucous night out complete with lederhosen and copious amounts of German beer.
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Manchester City Centre
BOX Deansgate
BOX is all about big-screen sports, booze (including two-for-one cocktails) and blokes singing – ‘bandeoke’ is a thing and it exists here. The Manchester outpost of a popular Yorkshire concept, head here if you want a front-row seat at every match, game, fixture and fight on a high-definition wide screen. Whatever sports are being shown by Sky, BT and Box Office, you will find them on one of the 25 screens.
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Manchester City Centre
The Brotherhood of Pursuits and Pastimes
The Brotherhood of Pursuits and Pastimes has a more grown-up look than most sports bars, all muted greens rather than shouty neon. However, when it comes to atmosphere, it’s a great place to watch live events.
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Northern Quarter
Calcio!
Calcio! is a sports and retro gaming bar on Dale Street in the Northern Quarter. As anyone who remembers watching Italia 90 will know, football is the focus here, but old-school consoles provide the drama when there’s not a match on.
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Northern Quarter
The Crafty Pig
The Crafty Pig is a sociable bar on the edge of Manchester’s Northern Quarter with a busy beer garden and a sports bar vibe.
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Manchester City Centre
The Deansgate
The Deansgate is a bit of a landmark pub in Manchester, having been in this spot for 200 years.
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Piccadilly
Diecast
Diecast is a party venue and ‘creative neighbourhood’ five-minutes’ walk from Manchester Piccadilly station.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
Exhibition
Exhibition is one of Manchester’s cluster of exciting multi-kitchen concepts (read: food halls) that just seem to be multiplying. In the former home of the Natural History Museum, the location makes it perfect for visitors to Manchester Central, the Radisson Blu and the Midland Hotel.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
Freight Island
Food hall meets music festival is how we’d describe Freight Island to anyone confused about what they’ll find at this regenerated rail depot beyond Piccadilly Station.
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Greater Manchester
Gorilla
Gorilla is tucked under a railway arch, it has a slightly industrial vibe but it’s comfortable for all that. The cocktails are good and good value too – Gorilla is as much a bar as it is a restaurant.
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Manchester City Centre
New Century
Opened in the summer of 2022 after a hefty refurb which transformed the tired-looking New Century Hall of the mid-twentieth century into a newfangled music and dining destination in Manchester’s trendy NOMA district.
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Manchester City Centre
O’Neill’s Printworks
O’Neill’s in the Printworks is a lively bar (some would say too lively) that’s known as a decent place to watch the football, or to go for pre-Arena drinks.
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Manchester City Centre
The Oast House
From the same stable as The Botanists around town, The Oast House boasts those “famous” Hanging Kebabs and, with its copious outside space in the middle of Spinningfields, is a favourite as a bit of a city centre sunny spot.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
The Pen & Pencil
The Pen and Pencil is the Northern Quarter’s cool all-day hangout, modelled on the New York bar of the same name popular with the city’s journalists and ad men in the 1950s and 1960s. It has a reputation for great cocktails, quality food and an atmosphere that makes it stand out from nearby imitators.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
Pong & Puck | Great Northern
Get your game face on with an afternoon of pool, shuffleboard and table tennis at Pong & Puck in The Great Northern.
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Book Now Manchester City Centre
Seven Bro7hers Ancoats
This bar on Cutting Room Square from the Seven Bro7hers Brewery clan is perfectly placed to cater for the craft beer drinkers of Ancoats.
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Book Now Media City
Seven Bro7hers Media City
A stone’s throw from their brewery and taproom, Salford alemeisters Seven Bro7hers have a beerhouse and kitchen with outside space right in the heart of MediaCity, where they’re serving up “the best pints in town” alongside a choice of hand food with which to mop up the hop.
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Book Now Media City
Seven Bro7hers Middlewood Locks
Seven Bro7hers in Salford at the Middlewood Locks development is the ideal place for some al fresco eating and drinking by the canal, it’s scenic in a gentrified industrial waterside way. The inside is done out well too – handsome and high-ceilinged but with board games and a cosiness that bely the concrete and brick finish. It’s the perfect distance from town too as it’s short enough to be a pleasant stroll (about 7 minutes from Chapel Street) but far enough that you feel like you deserve a pint and a burger when you get there.
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Manchester City Centre
Society
Located in between St Peter’s Square and The Bridgewater Hall, Society brings new life to the quiet yet elegant stretch of city between Oxford Street and First Street. The outside area is a sunspot bordered by a fountain and a garden, making it feel more like Madrid than Manchester (weather permitting of course).