Today's Manchester university is a combination of Manchester University of Victoria and Manchester Polytechnic University.

The history of Manchester university can be traced back to 1824, when the Manchester Institute of machinery, founded by the father of modern chemistry, John Dalton (John Dalton) and others, was established and later developed into Manchester University of technology. Founded in 1851, the University of Victoria in Manchester was called Owens college, named after John Owens, a textile merchant who founded the college for 96942 pounds. Since then, Owens college in Manchester first launched the "Municipal University Movement", and became the first batch of municipal universities to be awarded the Royal Charter in 1880. As most of these University have red brick campus buildings, the British collectively refer to these universities as "Red Brick University". Only 6 universities in the UK enjoy this status, namely, Manchester University, University of Bristol, University of Sheffield, University of Birmingham, University of Leeds and University of Liverpool. They are all the top universities in the UK, which is different from Oxford and Cambridge.

On October 22, 2004, Manchester University of Victoria and Manchester Polytechnic University merged to form the largest single site University in the UK. The new school is called Manchester University.

The motto of the Merged University of Manchester is "Cognitio, Sapientia, Humanitas", which means "Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity" in English and "knowledge, wisdom, humanity" in Chinese.

On April 2, 2020, the University of Nanjing, University of New South Wales, University of Edinburgh and other universities officially announced the establishment of the International University climate alliance.