Solomun Waited Five Years to Headline Manchester Again. He Picked Warehouse Project's 20th Birthday to Do It.

Solomun hadn't headlined The Warehouse Project in five years. On September 25, he finally came back, and the Depot Mayfield date sold out before doors: the only UK headline show the Bosnian-German DJ played all year.

For a series built on marathon nights and mood over maximalism, booking Solomun into the 20th-anniversary season landed as a statement. His Diynamic-honed, slow-building sets are a different animal from some of the bigger-tent headliners Warehouse Project also books each winter, and putting him at the center of the milestone run says something about where the promoters think the series' identity actually sits.

What else changes in year 20?

The anniversary season runs September 2026 to January 2027. It opened on September 19 with Keinemusik's Rampa and &ME, then built toward Solomun's date and a run of bookings that reads more like a festival wishlist than a typical winter residency. Overmono host an all-night takeover on October 31 with James Blake back to back Joy Orbison, Moodymann, and Helena Hauff back to back DJ Bone, a lineup that would headline most festivals on its own. A daily morning programme, Dekmantel at Dawn, runs 11am to 2pm throughout the season, and Depot Mayfield gained a fourth room, Vault, alongside the existing Depot, Concourse and Archive.

The venue itself is part of the story. Warehouse Project started in 2006 inside Manchester's disused Boddingtons Strangeways brewery, moved through a former air-raid shelter under Piccadilly station, and eventually landed at the current Depot Mayfield complex. A fourth room is the biggest physical expansion the series has made in years, letting promoters run more takeovers and smaller-capacity bookings alongside the big-room headline slots.

Solomun's date sold out with no supporting headliner needed to move it.

Where does Warehouse Project go from here?

A flagship all-rooms 20th-anniversary show closes out the milestone stretch on November 27, using Depot, Concourse, Archive and Vault at once. Multiple dates across the season, including Solomun's, have already sold out, and the promoters have paired the bookings with a retrospective documentary, a photography exhibition and a podcast series tracing the project's two decades. None of that changes what actually sold the ticket in year 20: a headliner who hadn't played the room in half a decade, on a bill that treats house and techno as the main event rather than the opening act.