Company Bar

02/09/2026

This Friday 4th September a closed social event until midnight.

01/09/2026

27/08/2026

Stay safe and play safe guys!! Happy Pride 2026 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

26/08/2026

A little bit of Company history here oh happy days

25/08/2026

It’s Tuesgay.

25/08/2026

The 4 days of Pride with the Village staff. Have a fantastic time, everyone, but please be gentle with us.

21/08/2026

🏳️‍🌈 1 week to go 🏳️‍🌈

13/08/2026

Manchester Pride has changed enormously since its beginnings in the 1980s. The first celebrations were small, community-led events around the Gay Village during the August Bank Holiday, with the early gatherings combining fun, fundraising and activism. In 1985, Manchester’s first Gay Pub and Club Olympics included things such as tug-of-war, egg-and-spoon races and even boat races on the canal. Behind the humour was a serious purpose: raising money for people affected by HIV and AIDS at a time when the LGBTQ+ community faced considerable discrimination and hostility.

During the 1990s, the event gradually became more organised and ambitious. What became known as Manchester Mardi Gras developed into a full weekend of entertainment, markets, fireworks and fundraising, bringing increasingly large crowds into the Village. By the early 2000s, Manchester Pride had become a major fixture in the city’s calendar. The arrival of EuroPride in 2003 was a particularly important moment, bringing international attention to Manchester and helping transform the August Bank Holiday celebrations into a much larger festival.

The following years saw Pride grow from something primarily centred around the LGBTQ+ community into a huge city-wide celebration attracting people from across Britain and beyond. The parade became one of the defining features, with businesses, charities, community organisations, public services and thousands of individuals taking part. The festival also expanded beyond partying, incorporating arts, culture, film, sport, discussion, youth events and remembrance. By 2023, the parade alone had 18,000 participants and 228 entries, showing just how dramatically the event had grown from those modest beginnings.

Ultimately, Manchester Pride has evolved from a handful of people gathering around Canal Street and raising money for a community facing the AIDS crisis into one of the UK’s most recognisable Pride celebrations. What makes its history particularly interesting is that the two sides of Pride have always existed together: the celebration and the protest. The music, drag, dancing and enormous crowds are the visible side of Manchester Pride, but underneath it is a history of people coming together when they were being ignored, discriminated against and sometimes simply fighting to survive. That is rather more meaningful than just putting a rainbow on something and calling it a festival.

12/08/2026

The eclipse has started in Company

11/08/2026

It’s TUESGAY Opening at 8pm! With 20% off all your favourites.