Walking festival returns May 1
- The GM Walking Festival returns Friday, May 1 as Greater Manchester’s biggest walking and wheeling celebration. - The festival kicks off on May 1 with guided walks and community events across Greater Manchester. - It offers practical, local opportunities for walking participation and organized outdoor activity. (ilovemanchester.com)
Greater Manchester’s walking festival is set to return on Friday, May 1, with free walks and wheeling events scheduled across the city region through May. (gmwalking.co.uk) The 2026 programme is live on the GM Walking website, where people can filter events by borough, distance, weekday, public transport links, wheelchair access and buggy-friendliness. The listings range from easy walks of up to 2 miles to challenging routes of 10 miles or more. (gmwalking.co.uk) The festival is organised around National Walking Month and is coordinated by Greater Manchester Moving with local groups, clubs and community organisations. Organisers say anyone can host a walk, as long as it is free to join. (gmringway.org; gmmoving.co.uk) This year’s theme is “Celebrating Connected Communities,” with organisers asking for events that use walking and wheeling to bring local people together. The festival has been running since 2015, giving it an established place in Greater Manchester’s May events calendar. (gmringway.org) The “wheeling” part is deliberate: festival material defines it as moving at walking pace, including pushchairs, wheelchairs and other mobility aids. That makes the programme broader than a standard hiking festival and helps explain why accessibility filters are built into the route finder. (gmmoving.co.uk; gmwalking.co.uk) Greater Manchester Moving said last year’s edition was its biggest yet, with close to 400 walking and wheeling events held during May 2025. The group said those events were delivered by community organisers across all 10 Greater Manchester boroughs. (gmmoving.co.uk) The 2026 programme also includes a new partnership with The Scott Trust’s Legacies of Enslavement programme, which is commissioning four new routes for the festival. Each selected route creator receives £2,000, with the routes due to be activated at least twice between May 1-4 and May 25-29. (gmmoving.co.uk) For residents, the practical change is simple: the month now comes with a searchable calendar of free local walks, from short park circuits to longer guided outings, instead of a single launch event. The first events begin on Friday, May 1. (gmwalking.co.uk; ilovemanchester.com)
