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Arri Alexa 35 Live provides Hollywood look for Eurovision

For the first time in Eurovision’s 70-year history, the contest was captured not with standard broadcast cameras, but 24 Arri Alexa 35 Live cameras with Super 35 sensors. These cameras were chosen by Austrian state broadcaster ORF to deliver a Hollywood-inspired cinematic look.

“During a test in Sweden we placed the Arri cameras next to the main broadcast camera of our Swedish colleagues and we saw different color nuances with the numerous light, fire, and special effect elements”, says Michael Kögler, Head of Directors at ORF. “These are things that people watching at home will see -things they have never seen in this context before.”

The ability of the Arri Multicam System to implement bespoke creative looks was embraced by the delegations. During preproduction Arri prepared a “look book” of around fifty music video-inspired looks, from which the delegations made selections in collaboration with the event’s lighting designer and vision mixer.

Only one country chose to stick with the show LUT; all the others chose an Arri look and the winning delegation, Bulgaria, used two different looks during its performance. “Every country had its own lookup table that could be loaded into the cameras instantly, and you could switch between the different looks”, says Bernhard Popovic, Camera Operator.

With so many looks being used during the final show, Arri set up a workflow that enabled automated look-switching on a shot-by-shot basis. This facilitated what looked like 25 unique music videos, but shot in real time and output live with no postproduction and no additional complications to the broadcast workflow. The addition of cinema-style looks on top of creative lighting design and traditional live painting enabled subtler nuances of color and was especially beneficial to skin tones.

After all the preparation, the look building, and the many rehearsals, the 2026 Eurovision grand final was broadcast live on May 16, 2026. The new cinematic aesthetic was as noticeable to the audiences at home as it was to the creatives and technicians in Vienna. “I believe this will change the future of television”, states  Kögler. “There are possibilities for a completely different visual language, a completely different representation for various events - and not just for live entertainment, but also for sports events.”

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