AO Arena

The AO Arena is Manchester’s most loved venue, with a long history of staging some of the best music and live entertainment events in the region. The AO Arena is also a stunning location for a range of events, with highly skilled, passionate operational, catering, and technical teams onsite to bring your event to life and wow your guests.

Whether it’s a 1000-person dinner on the bowl floor, a conference, convention, exhibition,  party, networking event, or product launch, it’s our venue, your vision. 

We have a range of conference spaces available for private hire, both small and large.  Our venue is highly versatile, scalable, and flexible and we can easily accommodate your brief.  With no real height, weight or noise restrictions, the creativity and potential production for your event is limitless.

The AO Arena Manchester, managed and operated by ASM Global, is one of the busiest venues in the world and the largest indoor sporting arena in Europe.  Opened in 1995, it has hosted some of the biggest names in live entertainment including U2, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Pavarotti and the record-breaking residency by local comedian Peter Kay. Big UK sporting events have included 2012 Olympic basketball warm up matches between team USA and GB, The Davis Cup & international boxing matches.

Attracting over one million visitors each year, the 23,000 capacity Arena is a former winner of the industry's prestigious International Venue of the Year award.

Hosting the biggest names in music and entertainment, we’ve been raising the roof since 1995. 

As we were moving towards our 30-year anniversary in 2025, we embarked on a well-deserved £50 million transformation, revitalising, and future proofing our iconic, award-winning Manchester venue.  In March 2024, we opened our new concourse, high-end Mezz bar and Mezz restaurant along with new artist dressing rooms and production areas, a world-class green room with meet and greet facilities plus an overhaul of crew catering puts our backstage, centre stage.  Our unique and innovative premium experiences deliver the very best British and Global cuisine, champagne, fine wines, cocktails and pre- and post-show entertainment.  This incredible re-development  of these brand new high spaces is also available for private hire opportunities for conferences, events and parties.