The main campus is south of Manchester city centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Observatory—a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2019/20, the university had 40,485 students and 10,400 staff, making it the 3rd largest university in the UK (out of 169 including the Open University), and the largest single-site university. The university had a consolidated income of £1.1 billion in 2019–20, of which £264.7 million was from research grants and contracts (6th place nationally behind Oxford, UCL, Cambridge, Imperial and Edinburgh). It has the fifth-largest endowment of any university in the UK, after the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh and King's College London. 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 has 25 Nobel laureates among its past and present students and staff, the fourth-highest number of any single university in the United Kingdom.