Laughterama is coming back to Castlefield Bowl in Manchester this September, with a five-night run from 2 to 6 September and Stewart Lee among the acts on a bill the organisers say is their biggest yet. Tickets are priced at £29 and are available now at laughterama.com.

The festival line-up also includes Jack Dee, Nick Mohammed, Sarah Pascoe, Fern Brady and Nina Conti, alongside Vittorio Angelone, Kiran Saggu and Jen Nolan. Will Briggs said the team was thrilled to return to Castlefield Bowl, calling every edition there electric and this year’s programme an all-time great.

The booking is a clear sign that Laughterama has settled into Manchester’s live comedy calendar. First launched in 2022, the open-air festival has already put on sell-out shows featuring James Acaster, Aisling Bea and Josh Widdicombe, and it now draws more than 10,000 comedy-lovers each year from Manchester and beyond.

That momentum matters because the festival is not just a one-off city event. Laughterama is produced by the sibling team behind 57 Festivals, which runs comedy festivals annually across London and the South, and Briggs and Cass Randolph have spent over fifteen years building their reputation with tightly curated comedy line-ups in boutique-festival settings.

The tension for this year is simple: a festival that has already built a loyal following now has to prove that a bigger bill can still feel personal. The line-up is crowded with familiar names and newer acts, but the draw has always been the setting as much as the bookings, and Castlefield Bowl has become part of the identity Laughterama is trying to preserve while it grows.

For Manchester audiences, the next step is straightforward. The festival opens on 2 September and runs through 6 September, and the scale of the line-up suggests organisers are betting that the city’s appetite for comedy is still expanding rather than plateauing.