The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England, formed in 2004 by the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the Victoria University of Manchester. The University of Manchester is a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late-19th century.

The main campus is south of Manchester city centre on Oxford Road. In 2014/15, the university had 38,590 students and 10,400 staff, making it the second largest university in the UK , and the largest single-site university. The university had an income of £987.2 million in 2015–16, of which £273.5 million was from research grants and contracts. It has the third largest endowment of any university in England, after the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. It is a member of the worldwide Universities Research Association, the Russell Group of British research universities and the N8 Group.

The University of Manchester is ranked 29th in the world by QS World University Rankings 2016. In the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities, Manchester was ranked 35th in the world and 5th in the UK. In an employability ranking published by Emerging in 2015, where CEOs and chairmen were asked to select the top universities they recruited from, Manchester was placed 24th in the world and 5th nationally. The Global Employability University Ranking conducted by THE places Manchester at 27th world-wide and 10th in Europe, ahead of academic powerhouses such as Cornell, UPenn and LSE. It is ranked joint 55th in the world and 8th in the UK in the 2016 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Manchester came fifth in terms of research power and seventeenth for grade point average quality when including specialist institutions. More students try to gain entry than to any other university in the country, with more than 55,000 applications for undergraduate courses in 2014 resulting in 6.5 applicants for every available place. According to the 2015 High Fliers Report, Manchester is the most targeted university by the largest number of leading graduate employers in the UK.

The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory and its Grade I listed Lovell Telescope.

The University of Manchester has 25 Nobel laureates among its past and present students and staff, the fourth-highest number of any single university in the United Kingdom. Four Nobel laureates are currently among its staff – more than any other British university.