Public voting for the Excellence In Live Design Awards 2026 opens in October.
Project Name
The Best of Mata & #MATA2040 Tour
Type Of Project
Concert (Stadium Tour, primary venue capacity 20,000+). Two consecutive stadium shows at PGE Narodowy Stadium, Warsaw including Stage Design, Lighting Design, Multimedia System Design & Engineering held on May 15–16, 2026.
Client was Muzyka sp. z o.o. / MATA,
Production: DM Agency / Not Bad Productions
Stage & Lighting Design: Jacek Chojczak/Green Beam Design
Green Beam Design’s scope encompassed stage and scenic design, lighting design, and the design and engineering of an integrated multimedia system for the shows.
Design Criteria
The primary design challenge was to create a stage capable of operating at the scale of a 60,000-capacity national stadium.
At such distances, traditional scenic detail loses its visual impact. Rather than building the stage from multiple smaller elements, Green Beam Design reduced the entire concept to one monumental, instantly recognizable architectural gesture: the Steps.
The starting point was the artist’s own story. Warsaw’s “Schodki” (“the Steps”) an iconic gathering place for young people on the banks of the Vistula River - are closely connected to the beginning of Mata’s career and have become one of the symbols associated with his work. The design transformed them into a metaphor for the artist’s journey: from a rebellious young artist whose story began on Warsaw’s riverside steps to an artist selling out Poland’s largest stadium.
The resulting 84-step structure functioned simultaneously as the stage, scenic architecture, multimedia surface, lighting element, and performance space for the artist.
The second fundamental design challenge was to create two completely different shows on the same physical structure on two consecutive nights, with no additional day available for a scenic rebuild.
The first night presented the retrospective The Best of Mata, while the second introduced the futuristic world of the #MATA2040 Finale. Within a matter of hours, the same architecture had to transform not only in appearance, but also in character and visual language. This requirement shifted the project from traditional scenic design toward system design.
The elements responsible for transforming the stage - lighting, video, live cameras, color, real-time content, AI, and SFX - could not simply be added to a finished structure at a later stage.
Architecture and technology had to be conceived as a single integrated system from the very first sketch.
Project Description
Two sold-out nights at Poland’s national stadium were built around a single architectural idea executed as an integrated technical system.
The set was a monumental 84-step staircase with 60 m² of LED integrated directly into the structure, combined with 365 m² of conventional LED and 301 m² of transparent LED - 726 m² across three distinct technologies, operating as one visual environment.
Transparent LED allowed digital content and physical architecture to coexist in the same frame, transforming the stage into a full video environment without reducing it to a conventional screen. The stairs were not a route to the stage. They were the stage - architecture, video surface, lighting element, and performance space capable of holding a single figure within a 60,000-seat stadium.
The lighting system comprised 1,115 fixtures: 427 moving heads, 272 strobes, 296 blinders and washers, and 120 PAR cans. Beam architecture extended the geometry of the stage into the entire bowl, while strobes and blinders incorporated the audience into the composition.
Lighting, video, and an 18-camera system with OB van were designed as one visual language, creating a coherent image both in the stadium and on IMAG.
Control ran across five grandMA3 full-size consoles, one grandMA3 light, ProPlex Commander, and two disguise d3 VX4 servers. Ableton Live and QLab provided the timecode backbone, synchronizing lighting, video, 120 SFX devices, and external real-time systems.
The production was designed, tested, and preprogrammed in Syncronorm Depence R4 at GBD Studio, maximizing stadium time for final refinement.
Challenges and Solutions
Scale. Scenic detail disappears in a stadium bowl. The response was reduction: one dominant form with a strong silhouette, legible from the furthest seat, rooted in the artist's own iconography rather than in decoration. Where most stadium designs add, this one subtracted until a single shape carried the entire narrative - and then built the whole technical system into that shape rather than around it.
One structure, two shows. Two opposing artistic narratives on consecutive nights, no spare day, no rebuild. Solved by treating the set as multimedia architecture rather than scenery: the transformation between nights was carried entirely by lighting state, video content, color and live camera language. This only works if the system is designed for it from the start - the rig, the LED surfaces and the control architecture were all specified to support two complete, independently programmed shows on one physical structure.
Integrating three LED technologies as one image. Solid, transparent and stair-integrated LED have different brightness, pitch and response characteristics. Left unmanaged they read as three separate screens and defeat the architectural idea. Calibration and content workflow were built to hold them as one continuous surface for both the live audience and the broadcast cameras, where mismatched panels are unforgiving.
No recoverable failure. Two sold-out nights leave no margin. A five-console grandMA3 full-size setup distributed 1,115 fixtures across separate control domains with full redundancy, and GBD Studio pre-programmed the show off-site, so stadium time went into refinement rather than construction. The same control spine also had to absorb external systems - including a real-time AI segment delivered by a third party - without compromising show reproducibility across both nights.
Equipment
Video. The system was built around LED integrated directly into the staircase architecture - 60 m² across 84 treads - rather than a conventional screen behind the performer. This was extended by 365 m² of solid LED and 301 m² of transparent LED, driven by two disguise d3 VX4 servers. The transparent format was specified precisely so that content and structure could share a frame without the set reading as a video wall; solid LED carried the high-brightness IMAG and full-field content.
Lighting. 1,115 fixtures: 427 moving heads, 272 strobes, 296 blinders and washers, 120 PAR cans. The proportions were chosen for stadium physics - a high count of strobes and blinders to work the bowl and the crowd as a surface, moving heads for beam architecture that draws the set from any seat, and enough raw output to survive very long throws without losing color.
Control. Five grandMA3 full-size consoles, one grandMA3 light and a Proplex Commander, split across separate control domains for redundancy and for parallel programming of two complete shows. Ableton Live and QLab provided the timecode spine, synchronizing lighting, video, 120 SFX devices and external real-time systems into one reproducible show that had to run identically twice.
Crew
Production: DM Agency, Not Bad Productions
Director: Marek Zioło, Nikodem Marek,
Stage & Lighting Design: Jacek Chojczak
Design Team: Michał Parzych, Kajetan Gostomski, Łukasz Meliński, Tomasz Szwelicki, Paweł Baran, Artur Halski
Pre-programming: GBD Studio (Green Beam Design)
Special FX: Confetti System - Jakub Kowalik;
Video Content: Natan Berkowicz
Real-time Content: Melt Immersive Studio
Stage Manager: TINAP - Jakub Szczygieł
Multimedia & Lighting Supplier: Wizja Multimedia
Set: Scenografia Plus
Construction: ARAD
Vision Mixer: Marcin Migdalski, Michał Latocha - Good Mood Team
Camera: ATM System
Photo by Daniel Kapusta
Video by Kiwi Media
Photo credit: Daniel Kapusta