Eccles Town Hall ballroom joins Greater Manchester's live music map

When BBC Radio 6 Music announced that its 2026 festival would take place across Greater Manchester's independent venues, most of the names on the list were familiar. Band on the Wall and YES are city centre institutions. The new addition was the ballroom at Eccles Town Hall.

The festival ran from 25 to 28 March 2026, with headliners including Bloc Party, Courtney Barnett, The Horrors and Yard Act. This year the event set out to shine a light on grassroots venues, with partnership nights from promoters FaT OuT and Homobloc, and FaT OuT hosted an afternoon showcase in the Eccles ballroom.

The town hall did not stop there. Straight after the festival came Get In! To Eccles, a new festival weekend on 28 and 29 March. The ballroom hosted the Saturday evening headline show, presented by 6 Music Festival and FaT OuT, which sold out and was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music. Lauren Auder, Naima Bock and R.AGGS were on the bill.

The weekend's Sunday programme began in the same room with a children's performance from the BBC Philharmonic, a reminder that the ballroom can serve the whole community and not only late-night gig-goers.

What makes the story especially heartening is who runs the building. Eccles Town Hall is looked after by ECHO, a community group that negotiated a 25-year lease from Salford City Council. Its own description of the ballroom lists concerts, theatre, meetings and dancing among the uses it is suited to.

The hall also hosts regular community activity, including its Saturday Café Culture sessions, so the building is in use well beyond the big nights. That everyday life is what keeps a community venue going between headline shows.

For Eccles, the spring was a chance to show what a civic building can do when local people take charge of it. For music fans, it added a new room to Greater Manchester's live map.

Anyone keen to follow what comes next can find the latest news and bookings through Eccles Town Hall's own website, where ECHO shares details of events in the ballroom and around the building.