Partly copied from of LSIOnline.com – Read full article in the LSI Online June 2026 magazine +

VIENNESE WALTZ
ESC’s lighting design was once again in the safe hands of Tim Routledge Design, with all lighting equipment supplied by UK-based rental company Neg Earth, with whom Routledge also worked on the 2025 and 2023 editions. In a bid to improve ESC’s environmental credentials, for the first time, a completely LED and laser-sourced lighting system was used to reduce energy consumption.

“Eurovision is all about big moments,” Routledge explains. “The challenge was to design something that appears impressive and large while being significantly more responsible behind the scenes. Using 100% LED and laser technology on this scale shows that you
can have both – spectacular visuals and sustainable production.”

With around 2,100 fixtures and over 8,500 individually controllable LEDs at his disposal, the LD once again delivered
a sophisticated, high-impact design that reached every corner of Austria’s largest indoor arena. The design was also built for flexibility, allowing each participating delegation to be given a distinctly tailored visual identity while still operating within a unified show system, ensuring rapid transitions between acts without compromising individual creative direction.

Featured in the expansive rig were fixtures from Ayrton, Robe, Acme and Martin. This included over 700 Ayrton fixtures, from tried and trusted workhorses to its latest releases: Ayrton Cobra, EagleStrike, Khamsin, Mamba, MagicDot Neo, Nando 502, RawBeam 350, Rivale Profile and Zonda 9 FX. Around 550 Robe fixtures were also put to work, including 190 just-launched GigaPointe laser-source multifunctional moving lights, plus 98 WTF! LED strobe-wash-blinder fixtures and 25 HolyPATT vintage-style LED ‘scenic’ luminaires.

In addition to these, Routledge’s general lighting rig included 182 Robe SVB1 multisource LED wash beams, plus 64 iFortes and iForte LTXs for all the key lighting and specials on the mainstage and in the Green Room. Martin fixtures in the rig included MAC Encore Twos and MAC
Viper XIPs, while the nearly 500 Acme luminaires used comprised 153 Pulsar S2s, 145 Blinder Line 10IPs and 5IPs, 135 Pixel Line IPs and IP500s, and 52 Tornados.

“I wanted a simple, very clean grid above the stage that would allow me to change the architecture of the beams continuously, and give me options for the multitude of props and sets used by the delegate entries,” says Routledge of his design.

“We also wanted a clean look when bringing trusses in front of the screen and a sleeker kinetic system than moving pods or trusses.”

The answer was an overhead array of 80 Ayrton Rivale Profiles, each of which was on its own high-speed Kinetic Winch XL from
Kinetic Lights.

“All the winches had a gyroscope to keep them steady and were on X, Y, Z control so we could take control of any light in that rig with Follow-Me,” Routledge explains. “We were taking live positional data of the fixtures into the console at all times, which meant we could point the lights at a spot and move them without changing their focus.”The array was certainly put through its paces, adding dramatic movement, sine wave undulations and spirals, and a multitude of reconfigured performance spaces for entries such as those of Norway, Serbia, and Austrian artist JJ’s reprisal of his 2025 winning song, Wasted Love.

Bianca Mastroianni, Follow-Me Programmer adds “We used the snapline functionality in Follow-Me to draw ‘guidelines’ on the screen for a couple of acts so that the operators could see where set pieces were going to appear during dark changeovers. 

Coverage and programming finesse were undoubtedly more important than ever this year for the lighting team, considering the production’s upgraded camera system. The new setup included 24 Arri Alexa 35 Live cameras, with ORF’s goal being to
give the broadcast a more cinematic finish.

For the lighting department, this meant that more depth, definition and detail was visible, so they had considerably more latitude to play with lighting adjustments and fine-tune how elements like strobes and pyro would look on camera. “It enabled us to add more texture and finesse to every performance,” says Routledge.

The lighting team included Routledge’s associate LDs Morgan Evans and James Scott; moving light programmers Alex Mildenhall and Martin Higgins; key light programmer Marc Nicholson; overnight programmers Olly Martin and Manfred Nikitzer; Follow-Me programmer Bianca Mastroianni, followspot caller Louisa Smurthwaite and playback video producer Sam Lisher and team. Gaffer and crew chief was Keith Duncan.