International Mother Language Day takes place on the 21st February every year. This year to celebrate, Manchester City of Literature and a lot of our incredible partners have over a month of activities and events to celebrate this inspiring day.

This year there are a range of events, while most are in person, there are still some digital events available and the large majority are free and available for all ages to attend. You can download a copy of the full brochure below.

There are around 200 languages spoken in Manchester making it the most languages in the densest population in the UK, so this feels like a brilliant day to celebrate with Greater Manchester Communities.

For 2023 the IMLD events and exhibitions include Arabic, Estonian, Farsi, French, Icelandic, Hindi, Italian, Kurmanji, Lingala, Romani, Sorani, Spanish and Urdu, and that’s just the ones we could see from our list. There are many events based around attendees displaying their own languages, so there is room to celebrate all of Manchester’s language diversity.

The events around Greater Manchester involve libraries, cultural venues, community groups, universities, schools, museums, langauage centres, poets, writers, singers, dancers and translators, through a mix of interactive activity, creativity and reflection. There is something for everyone this IMLD.

There’s a series of events from different partner organisations and groups across Greater Manchester. Please scroll below to find out everything that’s happening, and you can click each event to find out more about it and book your place (not all events are ticketed and this will be specified).

You’re welcome to use the download link below to download a copy of the full Programme for your electronic devices or to print at home.

Join the IMLD conversation online @MCRCityofLit (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube), using the hashtag #MCRIMLD23 and #MotherLanguageDay, we’d love to see your experiences!

We have created a page showing the public transport options for reaching each IMLD event venue and a page with various itineraries to help you turn IMLD into a day out.