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Your guide to Welcome Week 2026

14 Sep 2026

A comprehensive guide to Welcome Week 2026, covering the fairs, tours, IT support and events running across campus, plus where colleagues can point new students who need a hand.

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Planning for Welcome Week began in March. Six months on, colleagues across our schools, Professional Services and the Students' Union are days away from finding out how it all comes together.

Next week, thousands of new students arrive on our campus, some of them for the very first time. They'll be nervous, excited, and pretending they are not lost, whilst quietly scanning for anyone wearing a lanyard.

This is where everything starts. The three or four years of study, the friendships, and the graduation ceremony we all watched departing students earn this summer.

Here's what's running during the week, and what colleagues are most likely to be asked.

The basics

  • Welcome Week runs from Monday 21 September.
  • Support continues well beyond it, across a longer induction period sometimes called the 100 days of welcome.
  • The central offer is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate taught students. Support for PGR students comes through the doctoral colleges.
  • Around 90 student ambassadors are employed for the week, staffing Ask Me points, supporting airport arrivals and helping at events.
  • Students told us they don't want more to do during the week. They want the essentials, delivered simply, so they're ready to start studying in week one.

Where things are happening

Five main spaces are in use across the week, alongside the buildings schools are using for their own activity.

  • Welcome marquee, outside University Place. Home to the University fairs across the week.
  • Activity zone, the open-sided stretch tent behind the Learning Commons. Schools and societies have booked it for their own events, and students tend to use it as a social space in between.
  • Help zone, ground floor of University Place. Where students go to get something specific done. IT support is there, three banks are running pop-up branches so international students can present documents without travelling into the city centre, and students can register with the University GP service.
  • Whitworth Hall. School and programme events run here all week.
  • Ask Me points, staffed daily at the end of Brunswick Park opposite the Whitworth Arch, on the ground floor of University Place, and outside the Main Library.
  • The Welcome team also moves into the University Place atrium for the week, running the week's operations from there. Staff from across the University volunteer their time to support the core team, moving between venues to keep events running smoothly, liaising with colleagues across campus, and troubleshooting whatever comes up, from overflowing bins to genuine emergencies.

Fairs

University fairs, in the marquee:

  • Monday and Tuesday - Start of Year Fair. The main introduction to the student services students may want to use during their time here.
  • Wednesday  - WellFest. Services and support around health and wellbeing.
  • Thursday - Spend Smart Fair. One of the most popular of the week. Includes textbook rescue and the Second Life project, which redistributes items left behind in halls, alongside practical ways for students to make their money go further.
  • Friday - International Welcome Festival. Run in partnership with the Students' Union.

Students' Union fairs, which have changed slightly this year:

  • Monday - commercial fair. One day only this year.
  • Tuesday - sports and activities.
  • Wednesday, local business fair. A smaller version focused on Manchester businesses.
  • Thursday and Friday - societies.

Halls run their own fairs on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday before Welcome Week begins, one on each residential campus.

Tours

  • Campus tours leave hourly, 10am to 3pm, Monday to Friday, from the Ask Me point at the end of Brunswick Park. They're led by student ambassadors and are something students ask for every year.
  • Library tours run as individual and group sessions, with specialist tours for particular groups. All are listed on the Welcome events pages.
  • A new women's tour, developed with residents of the Brunswick Estate, launches during the week and takes students beyond campus into the surrounding neighbourhood.

IT support

  • Pop-up IT support stand in The Drum on the ground floor of University Place, running from Monday 21 to Thursday 24 September.
  • Additional support in the Main Library (ground floor) for eduroam, Wi-Fi and Duo two-factor authentication, running through Welcome Week and the week that follows.
  • Usual in-person IT support continues alongside both – including in the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons.
  • Online guidance for new students, including an animated video guide, can be found on the student section of the IT Services website.
  • Printed leaflets covering Wi-Fi, email, printing, Duo and Hornet are available at the Welcome Fair, in student hubs and at IT support desks.
  • A short presentation covering key IT services for students is also available, and colleagues are welcome to use it in local welcome activity.

Events for specific groups

A lot of work has gone into making sure students who need something different from the standard offer get it.

  • Students with autism can arrive in halls early, at a calmer and quieter time, with activities running from the Wednesday so they aren't waiting several days for the week to begin.
  • International students have a full programme, including an event on the Sunday before the week starts, daily warm welcomes in the Students' Union building and a festival on the Friday.
  • Parents are on campus in growing numbers on the Monday and Tuesday, often having travelled from overseas, and they arrive with questions of their own. A session for them runs on Monday morning in Whitworth Hall.
  • Commuter students have an event taking place Thursday 17 September to help them start building the connections they can miss out on by not living in halls.
  • Postgraduate taught students, mature learners and student parents each have networking events designed to help them find others in similar circumstances.
  • Care experienced and independent living students have a support event alongside the colleagues who work with them throughout the year. This is the only invitation-only event in the programme.
  • Black Heritage students have an event in the activity zone covering the initiatives and programmes open to them.

How colleagues can help

  • Wear an Ask Me badge. Stocks are going out to school hubs, and badges will also be available from the University Place atrium during the week.
  • Point students to the Welcome and induction website. It's been deliberately stripped back this year, and events can now be filtered by type, so students can find one thing without reading everything.
  • Encourage students to check their inbox. A simple prompt to double-check their inbox often has the answers they are looking for.
  • Know what's in your hub. Campus maps, the free things to do posters and a QR code poster covering the most common questions are all being delivered.

If you're asked something you can't answer

  • Student hubs are the first point of contact for most student queries.
  • The student support AI chatbot answers more than colleagues expect, and many of us use it ourselves.

Thank you to everyone who's had a hand in getting us ready for next week, and to everyone who'll be out on campus once it starts. Welcome Week only works because so many colleagues, across so many teams, care enough to make it happen. Thank you.

More information on Welcome 2026