The fall and future of Manchester Pride

When Saki Yew stepped off stage at this year’s Manchester Pride, she felt “joyous”.

The former Drag Race UK queen had spent weeks rehearsing and creating costumes for the performance at the city’s Sackville Gardens in August.

It was effort she was happy to make for one of the UK’s biggest LGBTQ+ events, and the reaction from the crowd made it worth it.

But when she asked Pride’s organisers for her payment, she says there was silence.

The charity behind Manchester Pride went bust this week, leaving dozens of performers, vendors and backstage workers unpaid.

In a statement confirming it had gone into liquidation, bosses blamed a “combination of rising costs, declining ticket sales and an ambitious refresh of the format aimed to challenge these issues”.

But some believe repeated warning signs about the sustainability of the event weren’t heeded.

Manchester Pride started in 1985 as a two-week fundraising event.

Since then, it’s grown in size and influence, becoming the first UK organisation to add black and brown stripes to the rainbow flag to represent LGBTQ+ people of colour.

By 2025 Manchester was one of the biggest Pride events in the UK, alongside London and Brighton’s annual celebrations.

With its increasing size came bigger names, including Ariana Grande, Sophie Ellis-Bexter, Anastacia and Zara Larsson.

This year’s star-studded line-up featured Nelly Furtado, Olly Alexander, and former Little Mix star Leigh-Anne.

But behind the scenes there were signs all was not well, according to people who worked on this year’s event.

Event manager Abbie Ashall had worked for Manchester Pride since 2023, and was a project manager for this year’s parade.

She tells BBC Newsbeat many charities were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, and there was evidence Manchester Pride had also been affected.

Abbie says she was given strict budgets to stick to, and noticed that former colleagues who left were not replaced.

Yet, at the same time, Abbie says, Pride’s organisers launched Mardi Gras this year – a two-day, ticketed event at Manchester’s high-capacity Mayfield Depot.

Attendees reported that crowds were small, and Abbie says the event was not considered successful.

Contractor Chris O’Connor worked at Manchester Pride for five years as a runner, a role he describes as a mixture of organisation and “troubleshooter-slash-firefighter”.

He says working in the run-up to previous Pride weekends had been “a joy”, but that 2025 had presented “red flags” and “major issues” for him to resolve from the start.

He believes Manchester Pride, which reported a loss of about £468,000 in 2023, should have had better control of the finances.

Both Chris and Abbie say they are still owed money for their work on 2025’s event.

In Chris’s case, he says not being paid prevented him visiting his son, who has just started university in Ireland.

Saki Yew tells Newsbeat she has “a life outside of drag” and “bills and groceries to pay for”.

Like Chris, Saki believes Pride’s organisers could have been more transparent about their financial troubles while people waited for payment.

“It’s highly disrespectful,” says Saki.

“You’ve kept us in the dark, you’ve just disrespected every single person on what they do and what they provide for you.”

Some suspect the lack of communication from Manchester Pride’s organisers over payment is linked to its failed bid to host 2028’s Europride.

The international event usually attracts huge crowds, and Abbie believes Pride bosses were banking on “the funding that would have come with that from Manchester City Council and beyond”.

When it was announced that Limerick and Clare, in Ireland, had won the bid earlier this month, hopes for potential Europride investment disappeared.

“I think they took a massive swing and it was a miss,” says Abbie.

The exact details of the circumstances leading up to Manchester Pride going into liquidation aren’t yet known.

However, the Charity Commission, which works to ensure organisations in England and Wales comply with the law, is “assessing concerns” after Pride’s bosses submitted a “serious incident report relating to its finances”.

There are also questions about future events in Manchester, and what shape they will take.

On the streets of the city, it’s not hard to find people who attended this year’s Pride and want to see the celebration return.

Kieran, 24, from Oldham, believes “it’s something that everyone in Manchester looks forward to”.

“It brings all types of culture and people together,” he says.

Lexi agrees Pride is “a big part of not only the culture of this city, but so important for the community itself”.

“If we don’t have Pride, what else do we have?”

Lexi says attending Pride events after she’d just come out was “a really important time” and “it would be horrible for people to lose that opportunity”.

Manchester City Council has said it will “support a new chapter for Manchester Pride weekend, which will take place next August”.

Lexi is optimistic.

“I would be happy to put my money into something, especially if it’s going to go back to the community,” she says.

There had been complaints about staging events outside Manchester’s gay village and focusing on spectacle over supporting LGBTQ+ causes.

“Maybe there’s a way around it in creating a cheaper, more sustainable Pride,” Lexi hopes.

But for the workers that may depend on, trust has been lost as well as money.

“This charity is there to platform and support queer artists and practitioners,” says Abbie.

“For all of those people to be at a loose end when this is the charity that is meant to raise them up more than anybody – that’s where it’s deeply frustrating and really upsetting.”

The BBC approached Manchester Pride for comment but it did not respond.

In a statement shared on social media, Manchester Pride’s Board of Trustees expressed “regret” for delays in communication, but said it was “keen not to jeopardise financial opportunities while our discussions were ongoing”.

It said it had hoped to find a way to continue to support those who had contributed, and was “sincerely sorry for those who will now lose out financially from the current situation”.

“We have put our hearts and souls into the celebration and community activities over two decades,” it added.

“We hope and believe that this leaves a positive and lasting legacy for the Pride movement in Greater Manchester.”

Additional reporting by Georgia Levy-Collins.

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