Masked Saguenay duo who loop double-necked microtonal guitar into hypnotic, odd-metred math rock, 2026's strangest breakout story.
Math rockExperimentalProg-rock

One Saturday, twelve Oxford Road venues, one wristband: The Beta Band, Stereolab and Ty Segall over a 69-act psych bill that has already sold out.
Manchester Psych Fest 2026 has already wrapped, but you can still dig through the lineup and find the acts you would have loved.
Name a few bands you love and we'll scout all 69 acts on the Manchester Psych Fest bill for the ones you shouldn't miss.
Manchester Psych Fest fits a whole festival into one Saturday and about half a mile of Oxford Road. Twelve city-centre venues (the Apollo, Manchester Academy, the O2 Ritz, Gorilla, YES, the Deaf Institute, the Bread Shed, Projekts Skate Park, Sandbar, Lass O'Gowrie, the Abbey and Circle Square) open to a single wristband, and 69 acts play across them between late morning and close. The 2026 edition sold out ahead of the weekend.
The Beta Band top the bill, reunited and finally playing the songs a whole generation knows secondhand. Stereolab and Ty Segall stand beside them, and the fourth headline slot goes to Angine de Poitrine, the masked Saguenay duo who have spent 2026 appearing on bills nobody predicted, this one included. Under that: Working Men's Club, White Denim, Billy Nomates, Allah-Las, Model/Actriz, Anna Von Hausswolff, Mandy, Indiana, bdrmm, Automatic and Bleech 9:3. Then the bill widens into a 55-act undercard of Manchester and UK newcomers, which is the part the festival is really built around.
None of this happens in a field, and that changes how you plan it. Venue capacities are first come, first served, so a must-see means turning up early rather than strolling in at set time. Set times are out (twelve stages, 13:30 to 02:15), and the site map and any word of the secret sets at the Abbey live in the festival's free WOOV app rather than on its website. Around the music there are film screenings, the Heads Talking talks, exhibitions and murals, yoga, workshops and street food spread across Circle Square.
Expect alternative, rock, psych and dream-pop across 69 acts.
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.
Masked Saguenay duo who loop double-necked microtonal guitar into hypnotic, odd-metred math rock, 2026's strangest breakout story.
Math rockExperimentalProg-rock
Motorik repetition welded to lounge-pop sweetness, with vintage Moog drone, Lætitia Sadier's bilingual cool, and a back catalogue that half of modern indie has quietly been mining for thirty years.
KrautrockIndie popLounge
Garage rock's most prolific fuzz dealer, with a new album every time you blink, and the live band hits harder than any of them.
Garage rockPsych
Scotland's beloved kitchen-sink psychedelicists, reunited: 'Dry the Rain' at last, and the High Fidelity scene made flesh.
FolktronicaPsych
Pipe-organ doom hymns: sacred music for the beautifully unwell, where cathedral drones meet gothic songcraft at genuinely tectonic volume.
Organ droneGothic
Minimalist LA synth-punk trio with icy grooves and motorik precision, like a security-camera feed of a party you're not cool enough to attend.
Post-punkSynth
Tor Maries alone with a drum machine and a scalpel, delivering deadpan, half-sung dispatches on class and burnout that swing from snarl to heartbreak inside a single verse.
Post-punkArt-pop
Alternative
Los Angeles record-store clerks turned reverb evangelists, with sun-bleached jangle and surf-edged garage psych that sounds recorded in 1966 and mixed somewhere near the Pacific.
PsychGarage rockSurf
Hull shoegazers steadily trading guitar cathedrals for electronics, with reverb-drowned melody that has grown colder, clubbier and more deliberate with every record.
ShoegazeDream-pop
Austin's virtuosic boogie machine, with prog chops, garage soul, and tempo changes played like party tricks.
Boogie-rockPsych
Sweat-slicked industrial post-punk with menace, glamour, and whispered filth, and a frontman who prowls the crowd like it's his living room.
Industrial post-punk
Corroded industrial noise with Valentine Caulfield's French-language vocals slicing through it, claustrophobic and physically loud, and recorded in places most bands would never think to track.
IndustrialNoise rockElectronic
Yorkshire synth-punk with New Order's chassis and a teenage engine, hacienda pulse rebuilt for new floors.
Synth-punk
Folk-rock
Manchester group formed in 2024, pushing indie rock toward the long build and open space of post-rock.
Alternative
Melbourne guitar-pop with Strokes-y snap. Australia's word-of-mouth favorite, tight songs played loose, garage-pop craft beyond their years.
Indie rock
Welsh- and Cornish-language psych-pop with a krautrock pulse underneath, where minority-language records come out expansive and forward-looking rather than archival.
Psych-popDream-pop
Gauzy London dream-pop: midnight-drive music, synths blurred to streetlight smears, soft-focus songs that glow in the dark.
Dream-pop
Alternative
German trio who improvise their krautrock in long single takes and release it at an alarming rate, with motorik pulse, fuzz haze, and very little standing between the jam and the record.
KrautrockSpace rock
Downtempo
Pop
Omnichord hymns from rural Virginia: luminous, homespun minimalism, songs that glow like lamplight through gauze.
Minimal folk-pop
Alternative
Alternative
Alternative
Alternative
Rock
Bedroom-scale songwriting with a soft, slightly woozy touch, featuring hushed vocals and guitar figures that unspool rather than build.
Alternative
Kentucky drawl, punk heart: swampy Southern storytelling with teeth, farm-town detail delivered with DIY conviction.
Southern rockFolk
Canadian psych project built on fuzz-caked riffs and lo-fi haze, playing motorik garage rock recorded rough and played tight.
Alternative
Alternative
Rock
Alternative
Alternative
Rock
Indie
Rock
Leeds lads making hardware-driven post-punk bangers about mundane dread, with deadpan vocals over squelching synths, pitched somewhere between a big night out and an existential crisis.
Alternative
Houston-born songwriter, raised on jazz piano, who started out in an Anaheim commune with the psych-folk band American Slang before going solo.
Folk
Alternative
Atlanta duo whose bedroom-folk beginnings curdled into something jagged and theatrical, with close-harmony sweetness undercut by lurching, deliberately unlovely guitars.
Indie rockArt-pop
Austin psych with the tempo down and the reverb up: hazy, organ-lined grooves built for drifting rather than freaking out.
PsychDream-pop
Alternative
Alternative
Izzy Hagerup's gnarled, gripping songs are beautiful and unsettling at once, with a voice that turns rooms silent mid-chord.
Indie rock
Alternative
Rock
A duo working the seam between shoegaze and cold wave: drum machines, black reverb, and hooks that surface slowly out of the murk.
DarkwaveShoegazePost-punk
Punk
Austin garage-psych group working fuzzed guitar against 60s pop melody, loose enough live to let the songs sprawl.
Rock
Alternative
Alternative
Xenya Genovese's woozy, guitar-led bedroom pop, sung like she's half-asleep and completely certain: Manchester cool at a whisper.
Indie popBedroom pop
Alternative
Punk
Pop
The Beta Band, Stereolab, Ty Segall, Angine de Poitrine, Working Men's Club, White Denim + 63 more
Saturday 5 September 2026: a single day, running from late morning until the venues close.
Across twelve venues in Manchester city centre, clustered around Oxford Road: the Apollo, Manchester Academy, the O2 Ritz, Gorilla, YES, the Deaf Institute, the Bread Shed, Projekts Skate Park, Sandbar, Lass O'Gowrie, the Abbey and Circle Square. One wristband gets you into all of them.
The Beta Band, Stereolab, Ty Segall and Angine de Poitrine, over a 69-act bill.
No. The 2026 festival is sold out. The festival is pointing people at its mailing list for any further releases.
Set times for all twelve stages are out. The day opens at 13:30 with Anna Von Hausswolff at Academy 1 and closes at 02:15. Both of the last sets are at YES, with LTTL MORT in the Pink Room and MOGAN in the basement. Every act's slot is on the lineup above; save the ones you want and LineupScout builds you a clash-checked personal schedule.
14+ before 11pm at Manchester Academy, the O2 Ritz, Projekts Skate Park, Gorilla, the Deaf Institute and the Bread Shed. YES is 18+ all day, and every venue is 18+ after 11pm.
Yes. Venues fill on a first-come, first-served basis and the wristband doesn't reserve you a place, so popular sets in the smaller rooms can close their doors.
Tell the finder at the top of this page a few bands you love, and it'll match you with your must-see sets, with reasons why.
Manchester Psych Fest is expected back in September 2027; the festival has not announced the 2027 dates yet. The 2026 lineup stays on this page until it does.
Festivals in September 2026Music festivals in the UKMore Alternative festivalsMore Indie festivalsMore Rock festivalsFull festival calendar