Best Post-Production Companies in Manchester (2026)

Introduction

Manchester has six full-service post-production companies worth a close look in 2026, split between the MediaCityUK campus in Salford and a handful of facilities in the city centre. Most of their work is television: drama, factual and entertainment for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and the streamers, with commercials and branded content alongside.

Two of the city’s biggest facilities changed hands or names in the last year. North Star Media bought Picture Shop’s Manchester operation from Streamland Media in October 2025 and renamed it Home Post Production, keeping all 40 staff. In June 2026 Landsec, which took full control of MediaCityUK in November 2024, renamed dock10 as MediaCity Studios and MediaCity Post. London houses have also kept investing in the city, with Radiant Post routing overflow work to its Manchester site at busy times.

Every company here has an active Greater Manchester facility in 2026 and offers more than one discipline under one roof (usually edit, grade and audio). Specialist colourists, edit houses, VFX studios and sound studios have their own pages. The list is unranked, since the right choice depends on the genre, budget and delivery spec of your project.

The best post-production companies in Manchester

1. MediaCity Post

Owned by Landsec · MediaCityUK · dock10.co.uk

MediaCity Post is the post-production arm of the former dock10, the studio and post facility at the heart of MediaCityUK. It took its new name in June 2026, when Landsec rebranded the site as MediaCity Studios and MediaCity Post. The post side has grown in stages: a boutique hub called The Quay opened in 2016, the same year dock10 bought the Manchester VFX and editing company Edit 19, and a £5m expansion in 2019 added 14 edit suites plus audio tracklay and dubbing.

It handled full picture post for ITV’s The Blame in 2026, from rushes ingest to final delivery, including a 25-day UHD HDR grade on FilmLight Baselight. The team has worked with Quay Street Productions for almost 15 years, on titles including Netflix’s Fool Me Once, Missing You and After the Flood. Remote editing links editors on location to the facility’s central storage.

2. Home Post Production

Owned by North Star Media · Quay Street, city centre · homepostproduction.com

Home Post Production is the 22,000 sq ft city centre facility that The Farm opened in 2018 and that later traded as Picture Shop Manchester. North Star Media, whose group headquarters is in Manchester, bought it from Streamland Media in October 2025, and it is often described as the largest post house in the UK outside London. Paul Austin, who has run the facility since 2017, stays on as managing director. Home added Picture Shop Bristol in March 2026.

Services cover location capture, offline and online editing, colour grading and finishing, VFX and a full audio department (tracklay, sound design, mixing, voiceover and ADR). Recent credits include This City is Ours for Left Bank Pictures, Sherwood for House Productions, Ambulance for Dragonfly TV and 24 Hours in A&E for The Garden.

3. Radiant North

Sister company of Radiant Post · Enterprise City, city centre · radiantnorth.co.uk

Radiant North is the Manchester facility of Radiant Post, a long-established broadcast post house in Shepherd’s Bush. It started as a pop-up on Deansgate in 2021, working on BBC One’s Fraud Squad and Moment of Proof for Brown Bob Productions, and moved into an 8,000 sq ft space in Allied London’s Enterprise City at the end of 2022. Owner Ben Plumb leads the business.

The site offers offline, online and grading on Avid Media Composer Symphony and DaVinci Resolve, Dolby Atmos dubbing theatres, voiceover booths and production office space for hire. It is linked to Radiant’s London sites and data centre, so projects can move between the two cities.

4. Active Pixel

Owned by ITV Studios · MediaCityUK · activepixel.co.uk

Active Pixel is ITV’s post-production facility in the Orange Tower at MediaCityUK. It delivers hundreds of hours of television a year across broadcast genres, with editing, grading, audio dubbing, file delivery and transmission handled in-house. Through ITV Content Services it also offers film restoration, digitisation and upscaling.

Its credits lean towards long-running factual and entertainment formats, including University Challenge, Countdown, Tonight and 63 Up, along with documentaries such as Red Arrows: Kings of the Sky. It suits productions that need high-volume delivery to broadcaster specification.

5. Space

Independent · MediaCityUK · wearespace.com

Space (Space Film & VFX) works from the Tomorrow building at MediaCityUK and keeps production, editing, grading, VFX, motion graphics and 2D and 3D animation in-house. It has been working with brands and broadcasters for more than ten years.

Recent projects listed by the studio include BBC One’s Vigil series 3, Netflix’s The Witness and Run Away, and Channel 4’s Tip Toe. Its mix of live-action production and post makes it a practical choice for branded and commercial work that needs a shoot, an edit and effects from the same team.

6. Rabble Post

Part of The Mob Film Group · Deansgate · rabblepost.co.uk

Rabble Post is a boutique post house in Queen’s Chambers on John Dalton Street, just off Deansgate. It opened in 2017 with investment from The Mob Film Group, taking over the city centre site previously run as Bark&Bite, and has since added ADR and voiceover studios and more grading capacity.

The facility offers offline and online editing, grading in DaVinci Resolve, 5.1 audio mixing, VFX and motion graphics. Clients have included AO.com, Manchester United, Manchester City and Etihad Airways, and its audio suites have been used for BBC ADR sessions. It handles everything from TV commercials to short social edits, bringing in regional freelancers for specialist jobs.

What to look for in a Manchester post-production company

Start with genre. Most of the large Manchester facilities grew up around television, so their workflows, deliverables and QC are built for broadcaster and streamer specs. If your project is a commercial or a brand film, ask to see recent advertising work and check who will grade and mix it.

Check where the work will happen. Several houses here are linked to London sites or run remote edit set-ups, which is useful for productions shooting in one city and finishing in another. Ask which suites, which colourist and which mixer you are booking, and whether any stage will be moved to another site.

Ask about delivery formats early. HDR, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos are now common requirements, and not every suite is set up for all of them. A clear agreement on specs, turnaround times and the number of review rounds avoids surprises at the online and the mix.

Finally, look at how rushes, cuts and notes move between the production office, the facility and the client. Large camera files, proxies and multiple versions can easily get spread across drives and email threads. Houses with a single place for the latest cut and a clear record of feedback are easier to work with across a long series.

How Fabric helps post-production teams

Fabric gives post teams one workspace for media, notes and client feedback, with AI search across all of it. Its cloud drive streams files on demand, so heavy rushes and exports open without a full download and take no local disk space. Shared team folders always hold the latest version, which suits a proxy workflow where editors and assistants work from the same media. There is more on this in how to edit video without filling your SSD.

Audio and video transcription turns uploaded MP4, MOV and WAV files into searchable text with clickable timestamps, which helps on interview-heavy factual series. Search then finds a line of dialogue, a document or an image by meaning, and jumps to the right point in the file.

For client review, cuts can be shared through links that work without sign-up, and reviewers can leave threaded comments with @mentions on any file. Any file or folder can be published as a web page and locked with password protection, and link analytics shows when each named recipient opened it. With annotations, reviewers can leave timestamped comments on video.

Files are protected with AES-256 encryption, Fabric is CASA Tier 2 certified, and workspace data is not used to train AI models.

Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

Where are most post-production companies in Manchester based?

They cluster in two places: MediaCityUK in Salford Quays, home to MediaCity Post, Active Pixel and Space, and Manchester city centre, where Home Post Production, Radiant North and Rabble Post have their facilities.

What happened to dock10?

Landsec, which owns MediaCityUK, renamed dock10 in June 2026. Its studios now trade as MediaCity Studios and its post-production facility as MediaCity Post.

What happened to Picture Shop Manchester?

North Star Media bought Picture Shop’s Manchester operation from Streamland Media in October 2025 and renamed it Home Post Production. The staff, facility and managing director stayed the same.

Do Manchester post houses work on commercials as well as TV?

Yes. Television makes up most of the work at the larger facilities, while Rabble Post and Space take on a lot of commercial and branded work.

How should I choose between a MediaCityUK facility and a city centre post house?

Look at the project first. MediaCityUK facilities sit next to the BBC and ITV studios and suit large broadcast series with complex deliverables. City centre houses are close to many production companies and agencies and often suit shorter projects or productions that want a smaller team.

Related lists

Post-production in other cities: New York · London · Los Angeles · Chicago · Toronto

More in Manchester: Creative agencies · Video production · Sound design · Animation · Content studios

Run your studio on Fabric: Fabric for video editors · Best cloud storage for video editors · Best video asset management tool