Manchester International Festival is back and so is MIF Daily – our curated guide to the festival! We’ll tell you what to read, watch, listen to and do to make the most of MIF25.

MIF Daily is filled with top tips, recommendations and free events to help you navigate the busy festival. Head behind the scenes with interviews, studio visits and editorials, taking you out into the city and far beyond.

Look out for MIF Daily on Factory+ from Tuesday to Sunday throughout the festival.

Come rain or shine, we’ll see you on Festival Square!

Read: Young Curators – Festival Picks

Today’s Festival Picks are from our Young Curator Jack Clarke – a Salford-born producer, artist and curator whose working-class roots fuel his mission to reshape cultural narratives. Read his reflections on reclaiming space as a Young Curator and the MIF25 shows at the top of his list!

Someone from Kersal like me wouldn’t dream of curating Chung's Chippy’s new menu, let alone shaping the future of art in Manchester. So yeah, being a Young Curator with Factory International feels strange. I’ve never felt like I belonged in the art world. That’s half the reason I’m doing it. Factory International’s got the tools, the artists, the space. Now imagine all that being used in rebellion, not reverence. Marginalised artists are rats in the floorboards right now, but the door’s cracked open. We don’t want pomp or posh. We want curation that speaks to us on the ground and doesn’t flinch at the truth.

Top pick – Blackhaine. And Now I Know What Love Is feels less like a show and more like surviving a storm in an abandoned mill with your soul on the floor. It’s a raw, wrenching trip through love, grief and grit. Over at Festival Square, the open programming feels alive: no velvet ropes, just art you can touch. And An Inheritance at Manchester Art Gallery is deep, giving history a mirror and saying ‘look again’. Each of these pushes back, against apathy, against erasure. This isn’t art for galleries; it’s art for the streets. Where it started.

Listen: Dream Space with AFRODEUTSCHE

Tomorrow, Surround Sounds brings a stellar line-up to Aviva Studios for the final Friday night of the festival – featuring the inimitable AFRODEUTSCHE b2b with Jamz Supernova.

We’re listening back to our Dream Space episode with AFRODEUTSCHE, who whisks us away to a mystical destination.

Catch up on all episodes of Dream Space hosted by Gemma Cairney here.

DO: Germaine Kruip: A Possibility

Are you ready for an immersive experience like no other? Premiering at the RNCM tonight, Germaine Kruip’s A Possibility explores the possibilities of perception, sound and performance – with new compositions by British composer Emily Howard and American composer Hahn Rowe.

Afterwards, head back to Festival Square for an evening of acoustic soul from inner or a genre-blending jazz jam with Purple Collective, led by Ladies of Midnight Blue.