Taken in the early hours of January 1, 2016, one photograph of chaos and a perfectly poised beer went viral – and in doing so captured Manchester’s nightlife, humour and heart like nothing else. Adam Maidment revisits a classic.
07:14, 03 Jan 2026Updated 12:28, 03 Jan 2026
An image of Manchester’s New Year’s Eve celebrations in 2016 is still popular ten years on from going viral(Image: Joel Goodman)
Ten years ago, a Manchester legend was born. A photo taken outside the Printworks in the early hours of January 1, 2016 that has – for many people – since served as an introduction to this city’s spirit, culture and character.
Taken by freelance journalist Joel Goodman, the photograph was nestled deep within a gallery of photographs depicting the late-night countdown celebrations to 2016 with the caption ‘another year, another mad New Year’s Eve in Manchester’. But nobody could anticipate that one image in particular would reach the likes of Brazil and Australia, with celebrities from all over also confessing their love for it.
Taken on Well Street in the city centre, the photograph features a man being wrestled to the ground by police officers, whilst a woman is seen shouting in his direction. Another officer is seen talking to another woman. In the background in the centre of it all, a man is seen strewn across the road showing half his stomach to the camera.
Within hours, the photo had gone viral thanks to a tweet from BBC journalist Roland Hughes. “I was at my parents’ house in North Wales, feeling horrible and wrapped up in a blanket by the fire, just scrolling through different things,” Roland, who is now a freelance journalist and editor, tells the Manchester Evening News of how he first came across the photo. “I think I saw a post on Twitter, which had a different photo. This one was like 16th or something in the whole gallery and it just made me go ‘wow’. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. It was unbelievable.
The location, on Wells Street, where the 2016 photograph by Joel Goodman was taken(Image: Joel Goodman)
“I just put it out on Twitter not thinking anything of it as the closest I’d ever come to going viral of any sort was just a couple of retweets. One of my Dutch followers shared it instantly and it just took off from there. It just blew up. It was insane. I had notifications on at the time for Twitter and it just kept buzzing with new shares and likes. It would not stop going off to the point that it literally froze my phone and I had to switch the notifications off.”
Circulating around the world, the image went on to appear on news channels, and was even shared online by prolific science fiction writer William Gibson from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was also described as a ‘modern day Renaissance masterpiece’, an association it has managed to keep hold of in the ten years since it was first taken.
The New Year’s Eve photo manages to perfectly capture a sense of Manchester’s nightlife. Wherever you look, there is something to admire – whether it’s the bottle of beer so perfectly poised amongst the chaos, or the woman at the back stood quite happily eating her chips whilst watching the madness in front of her unfold.
Each year, the image takes on new popularity as it remerges online, particularly in the build up towards the end of the year. It was recently shared on the Manchester subsection of Reddit, where it received a modest 2k upvotes. “I love this photo and I love this city,” the original poster said as many others also shared their admiration for the photo.
The image – dubbed Manchester’s ‘Renaissance’ – which has now been seen all over the world(Image: Joel Goodman)
“What an iconic moment. I have friends from around the world that saw that photo when it went viral,” one person said. Someone else replied: “I moved to Manchester from Canada in 2024 and finding this location was a high priority when I arrived. Several North American friends sent this to me when they heard where I was going.” Another simply commented: “Hang it in the Louvre.”
For Joel, he said at the time of the photograph’s online fame that he just happened to be ‘in the right place at the right time’. Reflecting ten years on, he says he could never have predicted how it would take on the life that it has. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted how it would be seen around the world,” he tells the Manchester Evening News. “I think it was just a very fortunate scenario where it caught on online at a time when social media was such a massive amplifier. The timing was all just very fortuitous.
“I think it’s also something that is relatable to a lot of people, even if it’s not explicitly so. People pick their characters, they can see themselves in that place at the time in one role or another. Even if it’s just walking past it. There’s a huge relatability to it, I think. It’s a real thing that really happened and therefore people can connect to it. It’s much harder to be cynical about it because of that.”
Adding about the photo’s universality, Roland says: “If you’re from Manchester, you can recognise the city and the type of people in the photo. But even if you’re not British or from Manchester, there’s still a connection there. You can still appreciate what it says. It’s basically about looking at things and being able to have a laugh at yourself in the process.
A group of Oasis fans visiting Manchester from Italy this summer decided to recreate the photo(Image: Luca Distefano)
“I maybe hadn’t anticipated at the time of it blowing up just how much Manchester would go on to embrace it either. There’s a way where you could look at it and think it represents a really negative side of Manchester, but the total opposite was true in that people recognised it as the city and the people they love. That was really nice to see.”
Over the years, the photo has even been compared to paintings from Hogarth, Caravaggio, Gericault and Lowry, and was later Photoshopped into classic works of art like Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam and Bathers at Asnières by Georges Pierre Seurat. Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, once even enquired about purchasing a print of the photo. George Takei, of Star Trek fame, also shared it online, whilst it was also hung up on the walls of the Manchester Evening News office.
As Oasismania swept the country earlier in the summer, the photo once again became a topic of discussion as a group of Italian fans visiting Manchester for Oasis’ big reunion shows at Heaton Park attempted to recreate the image. Posting on Bluesky, the original poster, Ros, said experiencing their recreation was an ‘incredibly stupid thing’, yet ‘a delight’ and ‘reinforced my love for this city’. Joel described it as an example of how Manchester continues to have a ‘soft power influence’ on the world.
Within days of being taken, the image was also replicated in art form by artist Nic Stacey
Asked whether the photo and its virality could ever be replicated in the same way again as we start to make our way into 2026, both Joel and Roland have their doubts. “The city’s changed a lot in the time since,” Roland explains. “That side of Manchester is definitely still there but I think the audience and society in terms of how we see things have changed a bit. But, I know the people in the photo have been interviewed about it since and have been able to kind of enjoy it for what it is.”
Joel says there would be more questions about the image if it were to be taken today. “A lot of people have told me that people would now assume it was done by AI. It would be met with more cynicism and a lot more resistance to just accepting it at face value for what it is, which is a great pity. We’ve massively lost trust these days, because something could very easily be fake. I think if it was taken ten years later, things would have played out very, very differently which is to all of our loss. AI in the bin, basically.”
But, ultimately, not only is the photo able to allow people to make a connection between themselves or others in the city, it’s also just a great photo. Roland says: “I’ve realised since first coming across this photo that it is just typical of Joel’s work as a photographer. He just has a brilliant eye for things. His framing and use of light is just brilliant. After seeing his other work, it’s not surprising to me that he did such a good job with this picture.”