Festival Review: Manchester Psych Fest 2026

Manchester’s beloved multi-venue offering returns with its punchiest bill to date, yet many highlights come courtesy of the lesser-known names and secret sets.

Since its humble beginnings as an all-dayer at Night & Day Café back in 2014, Manchester Psych Fest has expanded to include twelve live music venues, as well as a handful of pop-up spaces for DJs, poetry, film and crafts. It is now a fully-fledged takeover of the city’s cultural infrastructure. You can try your best to plan for it, but such is the vast nature of the programming and the festival’s penchant for surprises that it’s best to make peace with the fact that things will change throughout the day. Our meticulously crafted itinerary — two weeks of hard graft — went out of the window almost instantly, but a brilliant day of music ensued nonetheless.

First up, Manchester seven-piece Mleko take to one of the rare stages that can comfortably fit them all as they open up the Ritz. Seeing a room this big quickly fill up for music this weird says plenty about the appetite for discovery at the festival. Mleko toy with tension-relief dichotomies throughout their set: maniacal horn breakdowns rotate with intricate math-y guitar parts as they take us through cuts from their well-received debut EP The Feast of St. Perpetua and a number of newer songs that point towards another step forward. The snarling noise on stage is charmingly offset by the fact that they are clearly delighted to be on such a big stage. “This has always been a dream of ours,” says frontman Ed Whirlredge, beaming.

YES is already at capacity for fellow locals Shaking Hand, so we pivot over to catch the end of very-much-not-locals The Belair Lip Bombs. Fittingly, the Aussie group’s undeniable melodic indie rock seems to bring out the sun for the first time all week. The plan from this point was to head over to YES and dart between its two live music rooms to catch London alt-pop risers Silver Gore, followed by a double-header of brilliant American singer-songwriters in S.G. Goodman and Renny Conti. These plans are abandoned as we learn of the day’s first secret set: Ty Segall is playing solo in the city’s finest beer garden. The Abbey duly fills up and then some, with crowds spilling out into the street as Segall warms up for his later headline slot with a low-key show that spans almost two decades’ worth of material. ‘Thank God for Sinners’, ‘You’re the Doctor’ and closer ‘Orange Colour Queen’ work particularly well in this context. Whilst the trip to the other side of town writes off a number of sets to see this one, it is well worth it. The casual nature of it all is weirdly amusing. Pints are bought from the outside bar and (respectfully hushed) conversations murmur on towards the back of the garden. The atmosphere is almost as if it’s a generic small-town pub “live entertainment” performance, and then you tune back in and remember that it’s Ty Segall, one of the defining figures in modern psych and garage rock music. A festival highlight and, by some distance, the most surreal hour of the day.

Shoegazers Bdrmm draw us back towards the city centre, with the minuscule journey between theirs and Girl Group’s set at Gorilla seeming particularly attractive after traversing to The Abbey. Prewn plays in the clashiest part of the entire day, but the small amount of the set we’re able to catch more than justifies the hype. It is with regret that an early goodbye is necessary, but what follows is the highlight of the entire festival.

The attention that Tesni commands from a packed-out Deaf Institute is astounding. The room is pin-drop silent (save for some half-stifled sobs) when she plays and erupts with applause between each beautiful song. It is 9:30pm by the time she takes to the stage and people have been watching all sorts of high-energy live shows for hours by now, yet here they form the most attentive crowd of the festival. Perhaps they know that they may never see Tesni play in a room this intimate again. Her set is formed of a collection of songs that would be amongst Adrienne Lenker’s finest; decidedly delicate in their arrangement whilst rich and stirring in their emotional scope. Tesni deserves absolutely everything that will inevitably come her way. The stage is then closed out by Martial Arts, a necessary shot in the arm after Tesni’s gut-wrenching set. Their excellent debut EP From The Burnoff was forged in exactly this environment: sweaty Manchester rooms packed with their mates. You can tell. The scuzzy ‘The New House’ in particular sounds great on record, but reaches a whole new level when belted back at the band by the heads in the first few rows.

Finally, a short trip over to YES to catch Bathing Suits. It’s a testament to their enthralling live show that a fourth time seeing them in as many months was never questioned. The brutal collision of pummelling techno and deafening noise rock that her band generates compels frontwoman Freyja Blevins to flail and thrash around the stage with an intensity that is frankly unbelievable for somebody who does this as often as she does. Bathing Suits shows feel like an exorcism of mediocrity. There’s little doubt that they’re one of the best live bands in the country right now. Whenever you have the chance — and you’ll have plenty based on how relentless their schedule is — you should always go to see Bathing Suits.

Manchester Psych Fest is brilliant and bewildering. Want to spend all day bouncing between various cramped basements and discovering new stuff? You’re covered. Only interested in the big names? There’s still easily enough of that to justify your ticket. The only thing you can’t do is meticulously plan out your day, because there’s always a chance that one of the headliners is going to pop to your local boozer for a last-minute set.

Photography By: Bathing Suits @ Charles Leek, Mleko & Tesni @ Gabbi Goldman, Ty Segall @ Alberto Santinon