What is the Trafford Centre?
The Trafford Centre is a one-of-a-kind indoor shopping centre located in greater Manchester, England. This year the Trafford Centre celebrates its 28th birthday after its opening on September 10th, 1998. The Trafford Centre is the largest shopping centre in the North West and the third largest in the UK. It welcomes over 35 million visitors annually and cost over £600 million to originally open.
Shops
Since its opening in 1998, the Trafford Centre has opened over 200 stores and over 60 restaurants and bars. The thrill of the Trafford Centre draws in people from all over the world, leading to people traveling hours to get to the shopping centre. The Trafford Centre has a wide range of shops such as Sephora, Boots, Selfridges, John Lewis, H&M, and Primark to allow everyone’s shopping preferences to be met.
Holidays
The Trafford Centre offers a vast variety of events to do in the holidays. The winter holidays run from November until January and include an outdoor ice-skating rink, fairground rides, and games to provide a perfect family day out. As a part of the Christmas event, children and families have an opportunity to explore Santa’s grotto and meet Santa Claus!
Additionally, along temporary festivals, the Trafford Centre offers a wide selection of year- round activities. Attractions include their famous Sea world, which is an immersive, family friendly experience with well-trained employees which offer feeding classes and teaches young minds how to look after sea life. Other attractions, such as Legoland, provide an indoor playground with themed rides, a 4D cinema, and a ninja soft play area. Newer arrivals, such as Archie’s Roller Rink which provide delicious food for customers has definitely become a fan favourite since their opening.
New Stores and Grand Openings
With the wild success of the Trafford Centre, it has been able to host the opening of many new stores such as Sephora, Popsmart and the UK’s biggest JD sports.
Sephora is a well-known beauty store catching the eyes of people all over the world. With the store initially opening in the US, the demand for the opening of a Sephora store in the UK grew and Sephora was able to open their first UK store in the Trafford Centre on Thursday 16th May, 2024. Over 3000 visitors came to the opening with some even waiting for hours overnight to be one of the first in the store!
Another store that has been newly opened in the Trafford Centre is Popsmart. With Popsmart initially going viral on social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram the demand for this store in the UK increased. People queued for hours on the opening day of this store in the hopes to get their hands on the new blind boxes that the store sells. To this day there are still regular queues to enter the store with its amazing success.
The Trafford Centre opened the world’s largest JD with major celebrations on June 7th, 2025. The event proved to be a major success with Usain Bolt opening the store officially. Usain Bolt was also joined by performances by rapper Central Cee and YouTube group the Beta Squad. the store spans a 92-meter storefront with over 41,000sq ft of store inside.
Written by Sophia Pulo