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Burj Khalifa NYE event lit with Robe
As the world welcomed 2026, Dubai, UAE, staged a mixed visual media extravaganza, as lighting, video, lasers and fireworks fired off the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa tower, in an event organised by Emaar and produced by Our Legacy Creations.
Robe was also part of it, with eighty-six iForte LTX fixtures on the lighting rig for a spectacle staged on the Burj lake that led into the fireworks, lit by Dom Smith and Paul Johnson from UK-based design studio NeonBlack. The Burj Khalifa NYE event this year started with this dramatic, full-tilt 20-minute show staged across a 450-metre open performance space on a large section of the Burj lake in front of the 828-metre-high building that dominates the downtown Dubai skyline. Twenty-five custom floats, boats, waterboards and jet-skis were involved - with a cast of 570, including a tightrope walker traversing a high-tension cable strung between points of the adjacent shopping mall - in the performance.
Smith and Johnson met the challenges involved in lighting this show, creatively directed by Tiziana Pagliarulo (OLC), choosing Robe iForte LTX moving lights to provide all key lighting for the entertainment programme. The spectacle then led into the 60-second NYE countdown that cued the firework grand finale on the Burj. This new pre-fireworks segment added an extra visual layer to the annual event at the Burj Khalifa, watched by tens of thousands live, and streamed to billions more.
The main issue for Smith and Johnson’s lighting design was getting enough powerful key lighting rigged in the right places to register properly and illuminate the cast across this vast area, so the 36 broadcast cameras, directed by Marcus Viner, could get the best shots. Additionally, for the tightrope artist, twenty-four iForte LTXs were placed on the roof of the Dubai Mall to light the line. The only available positioning for tracking follow spots was on top of the souk market, around 150 metres away from the location of the wire.
“Robe’s iForte LTX was the only option to light the 150- to 200-metre longest throw distances involved”, says Smith, adding that, for the last two years, the iForte LTX has become a go-to key lighting tool for their work. The eighty-six iForte LTXs were supplied by the event’s technical equipment rental contractor Media Pro, who are based in Dubai, and were among approximately 3,000 other fixtures in total used for the show, including the Burj Khalifa’s permanently installed lights.
Most of these iForte LTXs were positioned all around the lake, mainly on the permanent PA speaker towers, with some on custom truss towers fabricated by Media Pro. The tightrope line itself was illuminated by the twenty-four iForte LTXs on top of the souk, and another two fixtures were positioned on the roof of the souk bazaar, used exclusively for tracking the artist. These were controlled by a Robe RoboSpot control system positioned by the lights on the rooftop to help with accurate targeting.
Most of the sixty iForte LTXs around the lake were also on a remote follow system using multiple fixed cameras to cover the enormous field of view that was the stage. All the show’s key and white lighting was programmed and directed by David Wolstenholme. The effects lighting was programmed by Eliot Jessep and Josh Musgrave in the UK and during pre-viz, and Alex Douglas in Dubai.
In addition to the various water-based performance floats, the event also included a series of large Rio-carnival style parade floats that drove down Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard at the start of the entertainment, which also had to be lit, together with the front of the Burj Khalifa facing onto the lake. The fireworks “conductor” was lifted up to fifteen metres on a hydraulic platform and was also tracked by iForte LTXs.
(Photos: Whatever Live/Katie Bowen)
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