AO Arena

You can put a seated audience of up to 9,100 on the floor and lower tiers of a working arena, or a 900-cover dinner on the bowl floor, and your delegates step straight off the train because the venue sits inside the Manchester Victoria Station complex. Smaller lounges, a private bar and restaurant, and a concourse that the venue says can be zoned for up to 2,000 people give you breakout, reception and hospitality space under the same roof, with in-house operations, catering and technical teams. AO Arena is the city’s large music and entertainment arena on Hunts Bank, M3 1AR, and it hires its spaces for conferences, exhibitions, dinners, awards and launches between shows. The venue says a £50 million redevelopment, which raised its concert capacity to 23,000, added a new lower concourse and The Mezz bar and restaurant.

Event spaces and capacities

The venue publishes six event spaces. The Arena Bowl is the largest, with 2,500 theatre style, 900 for banqueting and 9,100 in an auditorium layout using the floor and lower bowl, plus 3,120 m² of exhibition floor space. Its pages are not consistent on dinners. The venue for hire page lists 900 for banqueting, the dinners page says the bowl takes banquets of 600 to 4,500, and the conferences page gives up to 4,500 across reception, theatre, cabaret, dinner and boardroom layouts. Ask which figure applies to your layout and staging. The conferences page also mentions lounge spaces for up to 150 guests.

Capacities as published by the venue on its venue for hire page, with concourse and Mezz figures from its conferences page and private dining page, checked 5 November 2026. A blank cell means the venue does not publish that figure.

The Mezz splits into a bar and a restaurant that you can hire together or separately, and both have their own entrance, lift and reception area, reached through the Trinity Street tunnel. That lets you run a private reception without routing guests through the main arena doors.

Getting there and parking

Delegates arriving by rail come into Manchester Victoria, which the arena is built into. Metrolink trams run straight to Victoria from Rochdale, Bury, Altrincham, East Didsbury and Manchester Airport, and the venue puts the airport about ten miles away and under an hour by train and tram. Piccadilly station is a short walk, bus or tram ride away. Shudehill bus station is five minutes on foot and Piccadilly bus station ten.

CitiPark runs the on-site car park, with 958 spaces that can be booked ahead, including 40 Blue Badge bays that cannot be reserved and are allocated on arrival. The arena sits beside the Inner Ring Road, and the venue warns that surrounding roads are busy at peak times. It also lists four free Metrolink park and ride sites for visitors driving in. The venue does not publish loading dock, vehicle access or EV charging details on its public pages.

Catering, AV and accommodation

Catering is in-house. The venue says its Head Chef and on-site team build menus around audience, budget and dietary needs, from breakfasts and lunches to seated banquets, and that it sources produce from Simon Rogan’s Our Farm. The Mezz menu is curated by Simon Rogan and Tom Barnes. Technical and operational teams are on site, and the dinners page offers a dedicated event manager, space for a dancefloor, a bar for welcome drinks and a concierge service to help with delegate travel and hotel rates. The arena has no bedrooms of its own.

For access, the venue holds Attitude is Everything Gold, says all customer-facing staff have Deaf and disability awareness training, and publishes an access guide and an easy read document. It also shows a five-star SAVI security and vulnerability award on its venue hire page.

What to ask before you book

• Which dinner capacity applies to your layout, given the venue quotes 900, 600 to 4,500 and up to 4,500 on different pages?
• Which dates are free of concerts and their build days, and how long do you get in the bowl to load in and out?
• Where do exhibition trucks unload onto the 3,120 m² floor, and what are the floor loading limits?
• Can CitiPark spaces be held for your delegates, and at what rate, given show-night demand on the 958 spaces?
• Is The Mezz included when you hire the bowl, or priced as a separate booking for your drinks reception?
• What does the concierge service cover for delegate hotel rates, and which hotels does it work with?

Related on Events Review

• Conference venues in Manchester
• Conference and exhibition venues
• Stadium and sports venues
• Manchester Central
• The Bridgewater Hall
• Manchester Town Hall
• Emirates Old Trafford
• Etihad Campus
• Utilita Arena Cardiff
• Choose the venue around the event, not the headline capacity
• Turn venue accessibility claims into a usable event plan

Sources: venue for hire, conferences and exhibitions, special events, dinners and awards, private bar and dining, how to find us, accessibility and £50 million transformation, all on ao-arena.com, checked 5 November 2026.