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Follow-Me supports Hov1’s farewell show

Swedish hip-hoppers Hov1 did a farewell show at Gärdet, Stockholm at the end of summer 2025, a night that shattered the 2014 record for the largest outdoor concert audience in the city’s history, drawing 52,236 fans. At the heart of the show’s lighting design was Follow-Me’s manual performer tracking solution, deployed by Lighting Designer Jonathan Rikner with system tech Edvard Hansson and keylight operator Fredrik Jönsson.

Formed in 2015, Hov1 released seven studio albums, every one of them topping the Swedish Albums Chart, and amassed 42 top 10 singles, sixteen of which reached number one. Their farewell tour across July and August 2025 culminated in the Gärdet show that surpassed the previous Stockholm outdoor concert record set by Metallica in 2014.

The Follow-Me system enabled a show that balanced technical precision with emotional impact. “There were a few good moments in the show that really stood out”, says Rikner. “One of those was when we combined a beautiful cold silhouette with a nice, warm atmosphere from the front. That feeling and those pictures were something else.”

System tech Edvard Hansson managed the technical integration of the Follow-Me 3D Six System, which was supplied by Creative Technology Sweden and distributed by Topstage. The scale of the production, an open-air site with uneven ground and fixtures positioned up to seventy metres from the stage, demanded a rigorous approach to calibration. All calibration points were exported directly from Vectorworks as a CSV file into the Follow-Me system, delivering precise alignment from the outset.

“This workflow makes it easy to add plenty of extra reference data, which often becomes useful later in the process”, says Hansson. To address the challenge of uneven outdoor terrain, he anchored calibration points to the stage floor and used a drone to verify alignment, allowing him to calibrate fixtures accurately without relying on a camera. Operations were further streamlined by assigning one dedicated lighting operator to handle all fixture parameters except pan and tilt.

The rig featured twelve Robe iForte LTX fixtures: four as backlight and eight as front lights. The considerable throw distance created a shallow projection angle, which Hansson addressed by adding extra calibration points on the stage roof to extend tilt range and tighten alignment.

For the show itself, the team opted for a fully manual approach with a static z-height above the stage floor, allowing follow spot operators to focus entirely on tracking the artists. Mindful that some operators were relatively new to the system, Hansson designed the workflow to be as clear and accessible as possible.

“At first, I spent some time briefing the Follow-Me operators on how the system worked and supervised them closely for the initial run”, he says. “Once they understood the workflow, they were able to handle it confidently, which freed me up to focus on the bigger picture.” No snaplines or automated tracking were used.

Hansson concludes: “Follow-Me gave us the freedom to push the visual scale of the show. For Hov1’s farewell, it wasn’t just about following the performers, it was about amplifying their presence in front of almost 60,000 fans. The system allowed us to highlight every emotion and every moment with precision, and that played a big part in making their last show feel as impactful and unforgettable as the journey that led to it.”

(Photos: Robin de Blanche/Pao Duell)

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