La Mercè 2025 announcement
18 October 2024
Without Walls and XTRAX are delighted to be working in collaboration with Manchester City Council, Marketing Manchester, Brighter Sound and Arts Council England as Manchester is announced as the guest city for La Mercè 2025.
La Mercè is the annual festival of the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. The festival welcomes a huge programme of events from street arts, street processions, concerts, traditional celebrations and more. Every year, La Mercè invites a city to share its culture with Barcelona, and in 2025, the guest city will be Manchester. This a first for the UK and marks an exciting chapter for the city of Manchester, the festival and the outdoor arts sector.
Councillor Bev Craig, Leader of Manchester City Council, said: “We’re honoured to have been invited by Barcelona to be the 2025 guest city at their historic La Mercè Festival.”
Jaume Collboni, Mayor of Barcelona, said: “We’re deeply honoured to invite Manchester to be the guest city for their historic La Mercè in 2025.”
The announcement follows a multi-year journey with Without Walls and XTRAX to bring La Mercè to the city. Both organisations will work in partnership to showcase the best in outdoor arts today.
“As an organisation rooted in Manchester, we are immensely proud to be part of the La Mercè Festival in 2025 and to help bring outstanding outdoor work to its audiences next year.
Together with XTRAX we look forward to co-curating an outdoor arts programme that celebrates innovation, excellence and international cultural exchange to support and showcase the diversity of artists that reflect the city we live in today.”
Ralph Kennedy, Chief Executive at Without Walls
“I am proud to have secured Manchester as Guest City for La Mercè festival 2025, a relationship XTRAX has nurtured over many years. Our winning bid focuses on outdoor arts, and we are supporting the Artistic Director of La Mercè street arts festival to select a programme of diverse and ambitious outdoor arts from Manchester to feature in the festival in Barcelona in 2025.
XTRAX believes in the importance of outdoor festivals, and is committed to international collaboration. Since 2001 we have supported 100s of artists to showcase their work at international festivals in the UK and around the world. In light of the challenges to European mobility presented by Brexit, I am thrilled that this collaboration with one of Europe’s major outdoor festivals allows us to showcase the variety and quality of work from the UK, and Manchester in particular. We hope that this will pave the way for more European collaborations in the years to come.”
Maggie Clarke, Director at XTRAX