Manu Katché was born Emmanuel Katché on October 27, 1958, in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. His mother was French and his father came from Côte d'Ivoire; he was raised largely by his grandparents. He started on piano around the age of seven and then studied drums and percussion at the conservatoire in Saint-Maur. His first recording of note was Typhareth (1977), an album by the French zeuhl band Zao.

His career as a drummer for hire took off in 1985, when he played on Michel Jonasz's Unis vers l'uni, work that earned the best-arrangement prize at the French Victoires de la musique that year. From 1985 to 1988 he was also drummer and singer in the trio Preface, with the guitarist Kamil Rustam and the keyboardist Jean-Yves D'Angelo. The international break came in 1986 with Peter Gabriel's So, where he played drums on several tracks. It led to a long run of work with Sting (...Nothing Like the Sun, 1987, then The Soul Cages, Brand New Day and, in 2021, The Bridge), Dire Straits (On Every Street, 1991), Joni Mitchell (Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, 1988), Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos and Joe Satriani. German sources count several hundred studio sessions. He stayed on as Gabriel's drummer for Us (1992), Up (2002), the live release Back to Front (2014) and the i/o sessions and 2023 tour. Most listeners know him from these rock and pop records, and they remain the larger part of his public reputation.

The jazz side of his career began in 1989 with a trio concert at La Cigale in Paris alongside the saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the Indian violinist L. Shankar. Garbarek then used him on six ECM albums: Ragas and Sagas and I Took Up the Runes (both recorded in 1990), Twelve Moons (1992), Visible World (1995), In Praise of Dreams (recorded in 2003) and the live Dresden: In Concert (released in 2009). In 1994 he was one of three drummers on Al Di Meola's Orange and Blue, alongside Peter Erskine and Steve Gadd.

His first album under his own name, It's About Time (1991), was a pop and rock record that he produced himself, with guests including Daniel Lanois, David Rhodes, Peter Gabriel, Sting and the saxophonist Branford Marsalis. His jazz leader career began fourteen years later. Neighbourhood (ECM, 2005) was recorded between March and November 2004 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo and produced by Manfred Eicher, with Garbarek, the trumpeter Tomasz Stańko and the Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski and bassist Sławomir Kurkiewicz. It won the German Record Critics' annual prize as the jazz album of 2006. Playground (2007) and Third Round (2010) followed on ECM with changing casts, among them the Norwegian trumpeter Mathias Eick and saxophonists Trygve Seim and Tore Brunborg, the pianist Jason Rebello and the bassist Pino Palladino. The self-titled Manu Katché (ECM, 2012) used a bassless quartet of Katché, the pianist and organist Jim Watson, Brunborg and the Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær.

Molvær's place in the band was then taken by the Italian trumpeter Luca Aquino, who is on Live in Concert (ACT, 2014, recorded at the New Morning club in Paris) and on Unstatic (Anteprima, 2016). Katché launched Unstatic with a concert at the Paris Olympia on April 7, 2016, joined by Sting, Sting's guitarist Dominic Miller, Stephan Eicher and Noa. The Scope (2019) turned toward groove and electronics, with a quartet of drums, guitar, keyboards and bass. He has also been a guest drummer on other people's jazz records, among them Kyle Eastwood's Now (2006) and Metropolitain (2009), Stefano Bollani's Napoli Trip (2016), Raffaele Casarano's Oltremare (2018), Dominic Miller's ECM album Absinthe (2019), Benjamin Lackner's Last Decade (ECM, 2022) and, in 2025, part of Henri Texier's Healing Songs, where he shares the kit with Gautier Garrigue.

Outside the studio he became a familiar face on French television: a judge on the talent show Nouvelle Star from 2004 to 2007, known for blunt comments on rhythm and groove, and the host of the music series One Shot Not on Arte from April 2007 to the end of 2011. He presented the radio program Musicalities on France Inter in 2010 and, since 2021, has hosted the interview series La Face Katché on Yahoo France. He has written two books, Road Book (Le Cherche Midi, 2013) and #Beat (Grasset, 2024), and was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2004.

As of the spring of 2025 he was still touring: a run of twelve concerts in Quebec in March 2025 with the bassist Jérôme Regard, the guitarist Patrick Manouguian and the keyboardist and trumpeter Sebastian Studnitzky. He said then that he had about ten new compositions to try out live before recording them.

Katché is first of all a pop and rock session drummer: the records that made his name are Gabriel's and Sting's, and his first leader album was a pop album. His jazz leader work, from 2005 on, is a separate and genuine body of work, which is why his tags are crossover and fusion rather than straight-ahead jazz. English Wikipedia describes his bandleader albums as largely jazz fusion, and AllMusic files him as a jazz drummer and bandleader who emerged in the mid-2000s after a career with popular musicians.

His drumming is compact and song-shaped, built around a kit with several toms and splash cymbals, and his own writing follows the same instinct: short, melodic pieces with space around them. The ECM albums were produced by Manfred Eicher and are chamber-like in feel, with Nordic and Polish horn players and pianists carrying the tunes. A JazzTimes review of Playground called him the least egotistical drummer around, noting that the featured spots mostly go to his horn players and pianist, and added that the music sometimes leaned close to smooth jazz. He has said that at fifteen he was especially struck by the piano playing of Keith Jarrett and by a record by the guitarist John Abercrombie.