Taskmaster Announces First UK Arena Show With Greg Davies and Alex Horne

Taskmaster is heading to a UK arena for the first time, with Greg Davies and Alex Horne preparing to bring the television phenomenon to Manchester next year.

Taskmaster Live Manchester will take over the AO Arena on 26 May 2027, transforming the Channel 4 comedy format into a huge live competition involving celebrity contestants and members of the audience.

The official Taskmaster website has confirmed that the Manchester performance will be one of only two Taskmaster Live On Stage shows planned for 2027, with a second event taking place at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

Greg Davies and Alex Horne will run the show

The most important detail is that this is not simply a stage adaptation using different presenters.

Greg Davies will take his usual position as the Taskmaster, while creator Alex Horne returns as his devoted and frequently mistreated assistant.

The Manchester performance will feature three celebrity contestants and two people selected from the audience.

They will compete in a collection of specially created tasks before Davies decides who deserves to leave with the familiar golden Taskmaster trophy.

AO Arena says the performance will include brand-new tasks created specifically for the live show, meaning audiences will not simply be watching challenges recycled from television.

Audience members could end up competing

The possibility of being pulled into the competition is one of the biggest differences between watching Taskmaster at home and attending the arena show.

Audience members will be given opportunities to participate in challenges, with some ultimately joining the celebrity contestants on stage.

That creates a particularly dangerous prospect for anybody who normally watches the programme from their sofa confidently explaining how every task should have been completed.

In Manchester, there is at least a chance they may have to prove it.

The eventual winner will be crowned the Taskmaster Live On Stage Champion.

The celebrity contestants are still secret

No celebrity line-up has yet been announced for Manchester.

Organisers are deliberately keeping the guests secret for now, although the previous American version gives some idea of the calibre of people who might appear.

Earlier Taskmaster Live performances in the United States featured names including John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jason Mantzoukas and Lisa Gilroy.

Ticketmaster reports that the first US run sold out within 13 minutes, helping convince the team to expand the live format into much larger venues.

The Manchester show is a considerable step up in scale.

From television studio to one of Britain’s biggest arenas

Taskmaster began in 2015 with a deceptively simple format.

Five comedians are given strange challenges created by Alex Horne, often with deliberately vague rules designed to reward lateral thinking or expose spectacular overconfidence.

Greg Davies then awards points according to a mixture of performance, logic and whatever judgement happens to amuse him at the time.

The programme moved from Dave to Channel 4 in 2020 and has since become one of Britain’s biggest comedy exports.

International versions have been produced around the world, while the original UK episodes have built an enormous global audience online.

AO Arena says the official Taskmaster YouTube channel has passed 1.7 billion views and 2.3 million subscribers, with North American viewing continuing to grow particularly quickly.

Taskmaster is getting bigger without changing its basic idea

The strange thing about Taskmaster’s success is how little its central format has needed to change.

The scale may now be large enough for an arena, but the comedy still comes from watching intelligent people become completely confused by instructions that appear simple.

Recent television series have continued to attract major comedians and entertainment personalities without abandoning that basic idea.

The live show now has to recreate the same unpredictability in front of thousands of people rather than a studio audience.

Horne has already acknowledged the absurdity of the venues, joking that the Hollywood Bowl makes him think of Monty Python while Manchester Arena makes him think of Oasis.

Now Taskmaster gets both.

When do Taskmaster Manchester tickets go on sale?

Taskmaster Live On Stage takes place at AO Arena Manchester on Wednesday 26 May 2027.

General ticket sales open at 10am on Friday 16 October.

Fans can also register through the official Taskmaster website for presale information ahead of the main sale.

The celebrity competitors remain unknown, the tasks remain secret and nobody in the audience knows whether they may suddenly be asked to participate.

Which, for Taskmaster Live Manchester, is probably exactly how it should be.