Mindfulness event Manchester | The Manchester Mindfulness Festival

About MMF

PLEASE NOTE: All photos and videos are from our past in-person editions.
Edition 6 (17-18 October 2026) will be an ONLINE event!

The Manchester Mindfulness Festival offers a comprehensive programme filled with highly informative mindfulness-based talks, making mindfulness more easily available and inclusive. This inspires ripples across the region and far beyond.

“I am still processing the energy. There's something profound about coming together in the shared conviction that the benefits of this powerful practice can, and should, be accessible to all. Thank you for creating this community. I cherished every conversation I shared with speakers and attendees alike.”

Our Impact

Promoting wellbeing
Amplifying grassroots voices
Disrupting territorialism in the field
Fostering connection and collaboration
Providing a platform to engage with prominent speakers and researchers
Delivering culturally relevant and neuro-affirming mindfulness experiences
Deepening understanding of mindfulness for personal, professional, and social growth

Mindfulness isn't just about feeling better; it’s about being and doing better — for ourselves and for society.

It’s time to move beyond the misleading individual "blissing out" image and remember mindfulness is an active approach to meeting personal and collective experience, rooted in various lineages of wisdom, ethics, and integrity.

This is the kind of mindfulness we explore at the Manchester Mindfulness Festival.

Why attend the Manchester Mindfulness Festival?

Learn from insightful speakers
Experience an enjoyable and affordable way to earn CPD/CE hours
Explore innovative topics to address current personal and collective challenges
Share and network with attendees from around the world! (Participation is entirely optional.)

Our values: Quality, Inclusion, Safety

Quality

We aim to provide a varied programme that can appeal to a wider audience. All sessions are based on evidence, experience, and expertise, and are respectful of the contemplative and ethical roots of Mindfulness whilst also considering innovative applications of Mindfulness for modern life.

Inclusion

We aim to make the event inclusive by providing various ticket options, providing equal opportunities to speakers and partner organisations, and ensuring a welcoming, accessible, and respectful environment where everyone can belong.

Safety

We aim to make the event as accessible, safe, and comfortable as possible and work closely with our prospective visitors, speakers, and volunteers to ensure all reasonable measures are in place.

Our Story

A friend of mine was organising successful yoga festivals up and down the country. I was studying for my master’s in mindfulness at the time and it made me think… was there something like a mindfulness festival in Manchester?

It was June 2021. I had just submitted my last essay for the first academic year. The country was still coming out of lockdown and work was slow. With spare time on my hands, I Googled to see if a “Manchester Mindfulness Festival” existed. It did not.

Of course, there were plenty of wellbeing events. Some included “mindfulness,” but going by the information about the workshops, it seemed clear to me that something was off. As is so often the case, it was about relaxation. Blissing out. An escape from the everyday grind. But that's hyper-individualised mindfulness, without any trace of its original ethical framework to help us become better people and a better society.

Inspired by my studies, my love of Manchester and bringing people together, I decided to have a go at creating an event entirely dedicated to authentic mindfulness. Just four short months later, the first edition of the Manchester Mindfulness Festival took place at Friends Meeting House.

Following its modest success and with the encouragement from speakers and attendees alike, a second, third, fourth, and a milestone fifth edition followed. Now all taking place at the wonderful Bridgewater Hall and all growing in size and output.

The Manchester Mindfulness Festival has since welcomed many leading experts in the field, hosted the 2024 Innovations in Mindfulness Awards (organised by The Mindfulness Initiative), and enabled many wholesome mindfulness-based collaborations among visitors to come into existence.

And on 6th November 2025, we were absolutely delighted to win the coveted This Is Manchester Awards 2025 in the Promoting Wellbeing category.

We were encouraged by many to take part, overcame our initial hesitations, and accepted this recognition with both pride and, most of all, with deep gratitude.

Gratitude to all our guests, speakers, volunteers, and partners. This award represents ALL of us!

None of this could have happened without the unwavering support from my husband Ed, our dear friend Liz Lord, all the incredible speakers who often donate their time and expertise so wholeheartedly, and our wonderful volunteers.

Finally, a deep bow of gratitude to all our visitors. This event would not exist without you.

Christoph Spiessens - Founder

(The volunteers in the image are Lucy Ranger, Stassie King, and Louise Haynes.)