Terrace
Northern Quarter | Craft beers + rooftop garden + the NQ bar you stay in
Terrace is not the easiest place to find on Thomas Street but is definitely worth seeking out, as what you see is not what you get. The entrance is unassuming, all black, and not particularly eye-catching, but what you don’t see is the multiple outside seating areas both at ground level and (as the name suggests) up on terraces. If the weather is nice, you’ve struck gold. Cocktails are nice and the roof is one of my favourite places to yap in Manchester. Downstairs is darker, craftier, but still good for losing the night completely.
43 Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1NA
Dirty Martini
Deansgate | Moody booths + DJ + proper martinis
Dirty Martini is unapologetically a going-out bar, geometric tiles, neon, a DJ spinning before you’ve finished your first drink. It’s a chain, and therefore completely predictable, but sometimes that’s what the girls’ night needs. The martini menu is the headline: a solid range from classic dirty to espresso to house creations, served in booths with enough low lighting to forgive impractical footwear. Not subtle, very good, and exactly right for a girls’ night that wants the atmosphere handed to it from the second it walks in the door.
1 Peter Street, Manchester, M2 5QR
Albert’s Schloss
Peter Street | Alpine beer hall + live entertainment every night
Albert’s Schloss is the answer to the guaranteed good time. Three floors of Alpine-inflected energy: schnitzels and bread boards and steins, and a stage that reliably produces live singers, cabaret, and DJs every night of the week. By 9pm the benches are dancing on; by midnight it’s properly going. While we love going out-out in Manchester as much as the next group, sometimes it’s easier to just stay in one place. For a hen group or a big group that wants to eat, drink, and not have to think about where to go after, it works.
27 Peter Street, Manchester, M2 5RQ
Mollie’s
Castlefield | Basement cocktail bar + live music + heated terrace
Mollie’s is a new opening on the old Granada Studios site on Quay Street in December 2025, and is fast becoming the place to be. It’s a hotel-meets-bar situation, with Studio IV underneath the motel, with a live music space, a cocktail bar, and a heated outdoor terrace that makes a solid case for staying once you’ve arrived. The Granada TV history runs through the walls in a way that gives the whole place a specific glamour you can’t manufacture from scratch. Still finding its feet, but worth it.
Old Granada Studios, Atherton Street, Manchester, M3 3GQ
Lost Cat
Northern Quarter | Enter through the florist | Cocktails + club upstairs
You walk into Lost Cat through a florist on Oldham Street, which is either a good sign or a warning depending on where the night ends up. It’s a neighbourhood cocktail bar — unpretentious, well-stocked, BOGOF on cocktails until 9pm every day if you time it right — with a club space upstairs called FOUND that runs DJs and events at weekends. It doesn’t shout about itself, which is mostly the point. The kind of bar you mean to pop into for one and find yourself still in two hours later.
64 Oldham Street, Manchester, M4 1LE
Ramona
Northern Quarter | Frozen margs + beer garden + Detroit-style pizza
Ramona is a converted garage depot on Swan Street and it does Detroit-style pizza and frozen margaritas in a beer garden — a combination that sounds more chaotic than it actually is. The margs are cold and very drinkable; the garden has the right kind of easy energy for a group that wants to be outside but not standing up all night. Live music runs through the week and proper club nights take over on Fridays and Saturdays. The whole place operates at a pitch that suggests nobody’s going anywhere too early.
40 Swan Street, Manchester, M4 5JG
Diecast
Ducie Street | Former metalworks + Manchester’s biggest beer garden
Diecast is big — a former metalworks site repurposed into a creative neighbourhood with a Brooklyn-style beer hall, a NeoPan pizza kitchen, Manchester’s biggest beer garden (caravans, a firepit, a smokehouse), and Club Leno with DJs going into the night. It’s a lot. Industrial bones, neon signage, long communal tables, ceilings high enough to feel spacious even when it’s full. The kind of place where you arrive as a group, drift, then reconvene at the bar wondering where the last two hours went.
51 Ducie Street, Manchester, M1 2JQ
YES
Oxford Road | Four floors + rooftop + The Pink Room
YES runs across multiple floors on Charles Street: basement club, ground-floor beer hall, and a rooftop terrace at the top. It works for almost any version of a girls’ night because each floor has its own character, you can migrate upwards or downwards as the evening changes mood without ever putting your coat on. The drinks are affordable, the crowd is good, and the rooftop in summer has the kind of easy energy that makes Manchester feel like it always gets the weather right. It doesn’t, but YES helps.
38 Charles Street, Manchester, M1 7DB
To Be Frank
Northern Quarter | Owner-run + open till 2am
To Be Frank took over the old Another Heart to Feed site on Hilton Street and immediately felt like it had been there for years. Two floors: upstairs stays conversational and low-key, downstairs gets properly loud at weekends. It’s an indie business and really feels like one: the bar staff know what they’re doing, the drinks are above average for the NQ, and the whole thing runs until 2am without ever feeling like aclub. A reliable first stop or last stop depending on how ambitious the night turns out to be.
10 Hilton Street, Manchester, M1 1JF
Posie
City Centre | Cocktail bar + oyster happy hour
Posie is from the team behind 10 Tib Lane, which means serious cocktails in a room that doesn’t need to oversell itself. Floor-to-ceiling windows onto Spring Gardens, a Scandinavian-leaning interior, and a drinks menu running from cacao nib negronis to clean vodka martinis. The oyster and aperitivo happy hour runs Tuesday to Sunday 12–4pm — £8 aperitivo and oysters at a pound each — and it’s one of the quieter options on this list. But, the right kind of quiet: confident, unhurried, and worth knowing about before everyone else does.
17 Marble Street, Manchester, M2 3AW
Side Street
St John’s | Day-to-night cocktails + soul and disco DJs
Side Street is in the ABC Building in St John’s, tucked around the corner from Quay Street, and it has that specific quality of somewhere that was designed to feel like a discovery. Mid-century interiors, a cocktail bar that shifts from afternoon into night, and DJs running funk, soul, disco, and house once the sun goes down. Worth mentioning that the Tartuffe kitchen inside also does rotisserie chicken that is quite literally to die for. If you want a girls night that involves both a Manchester vibey dinner and good drinks after, this is the one. It’s the bar that people drive across the city for, and then stay in longer than they intended.
