Project Type
Live Broadcast Event – Winter Olympics 2026 Opening Ceremony
Project Name
Winter Olympics 2026 Opening Ceremony
Client: Balich Wonder Studio
Lighting: Bruno Poet Lighting
Design Criteria
The brief was to create a spectacular Opening Ceremony for the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, while dealing with an unprecedented format: for the first time, an Olympic Opening Ceremony would take place simultaneously across several geographically separate locations.
The lighting needed to work on two very different scales. It had to create the huge images and moments of spectacle expected from an Olympic ceremony, but it also had to provide precise, flattering and consistent lighting for an international television broadcast.
Unusually for a modern Olympic ceremony, the production did not use video screens or projection. The simple elegant scenic design of a white circular stage was a blank canvas, an opportunity that placed even greater emphasis on lighting to create scale, colour, movement, detailed storytelling and visual transformation of the stadium.
The Lighting Design team collaborated with 6 directors, each creating their own artistic or protocol segments. We needed to make each of these segments unique while always considering the show as a whole, to create a coherent 3.5 hour production. Described by Artistic Director Marco Balich as an analogue show, with the focus on the performers, music, art and humanity. The brief was to shape the movement and choreography with the care of a ballet or theatre piece while also connecting tightly to the music and delivering the spectacle expected of a world class ceremony.
The design therefore had to be capable of completely reshaping the space from one sequence to the next, while remaining flexible enough to respond to the inevitable changes that happen throughout rehearsals on a production of this size.
Project Description
The Opening Ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games was an ambitious live production on an extraordinary scale.
At the heart of the ceremony was Milan’s iconic San Siro Stadium, transformed from a football stadium into a vast performance environment for athletes, performers and artists. At the same time, live elements were taking place hundreds of kilometers away in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Livigno and Predazzo, and at the Arco Dela Pace in Milan, forming the first ever multi-site Athletes’ Parade in Olympic history.
Lighting played a fundamental role in shaping the ceremony. The design had to move effortlessly between monumental stadium-scale imagery and intimate theatrical moments, while always delivering for an international television broadcast. An extensive system of pixel-controlled LED tape was integrated directly into the floor, scenic elements and the Olympic Cauldron. Rather than being treated as a video surface, all the LED was controlled and programmed entirely as part of the lighting system.
This gave the lighting team an enormous visual canvas, ranging from individual performers to the architecture of the entire stadium, with conventional fixtures and hundreds of universes of scenic pixels working together as a single lighting system.
The lighting had to cover creative segments which varied from classical ballet to a tongue in cheek homage to the films of Fellini, Italian classical opera and popular culture, a playful section on the history of the winter Olympics ending with joyous dance, performances from Andrea Bocelli, Maria Carey, Lang Lang and Cecilia Bartoli. There was a dramatic choreographic segment culminating in the assembly of the Olympic rings, and a beautiful contemporary dance sequence about peace, followed by a speech by Charlize Theron. Protocol segments included the National Anthem, Olympic Anthem, the Parade of Athletes, speeches, the raising of the flags and the lighting of the cauldrons.
Behind the finished pictures was a huge amount of programming and control, but the aim was always that the technology disappeared and the audience simply saw one spectacular Olympic ceremony unfolding live.
Challenges and Solutions
The sheer scale of San Siro was one of the biggest challenges. The lighting had to create images that could fill the stadium, as well as drop to intimate moments, while at the same time providing the precision and control needed for a live television broadcast. Throw distances were considerable, particularly for key light, which made fixture choice and positioning critical. The Robe iForte LTX became central to solving this, giving us the output and control required for broadcast key light while also becoming one of the principal effects fixtures in the show.
The size of the performance space also presented a significant programming challenge. With a huge number of moving lights covering an enormous stage area, and limited programming and rehearsal time, manually creating and updating pan and tilt positions fixture-by-fixture would have been impractical. We made extensive use of grandMA3’s XYZ functionality, programming physical positions based on a highly detailed choreography chart within the stadium rather than relying solely on traditional pan and tilt values. This allowed large numbers of fixtures to be pointed accurately at the same location very quickly, and meant that when performer, scenic or staging positions changed, those targets could be updated across the rig far more efficiently. It became an important part of making a system of this scale manageable within the time available.
Another major challenge was the amount of pixel control built into the set. The floor contained 215 universes of individually controlled LED tape, with a further 25 universes across the podium, athletes’ parade ring and flown rings. All 240 universes were controlled directly by the lighting department rather than being treated as video content. This allowed the pixels to become a true extension of the lighting rig, but also meant managing an enormous number of additional parameters within the lighting system.
The ceremony was heavily timecoded, with some sequences requiring very detailed programming. At the same time, nothing could be programmed in a way that made it difficult to change. Rehearsals inevitably brought changes to staging, choreography, camera shots and creative direction, and the grandMA3 allowed large-scale changes to be made quickly without having to rebuild sequences from scratch.
The distributed nature of the ceremony brought another layer of complexity. San Siro was the principal venue, but the live broadcast moved between five locations hundreds of kilometers apart, including an Athletes’ Parade taking place simultaneously across four sites. Each location had its own production and technical requirements, but they ultimately had to come together as one live ceremony. Timing, communication and coordination between the venues and departments were therefore critical. There were even two Olympic Cauldrons, sculptures lit by hundreds of LED pixels, specified and programmed by the lighting team, which were lit simultaneously in Milan and Cortina, while cameras cut live between the two venues.
There was very little rehearsal and programming time in the stadium, probably less than any previous Olympics. We only had a week onstage with the set and the cast. A huge amount of planning, storyboarding, time watching offsite rehearsals and very detailed pre viz programming meant that we could make the best of every moment on stage. The freezing temperatures and constant rain were overcome by good humor, a lot of blankets and constant cups of tea.
What made the project particularly challenging was not any one of these elements in isolation, but having to deliver all of them at the same time: stadium-scale effects, broadcast-quality key light, theatrical intimacy, 240 universes of scenic pixels, a tightly timecoded show and the demands of a live multi-site Olympic ceremony — all while retaining enough flexibility to keep responding to the creative process right up until the ceremony went live.
Photo credits: David Davies, The Canadian Press, Ryo Aoki, Kirby Lee, SOPA Images.
Equipment
The scale of San Siro meant that the lighting design needed fixtures that could work over very long distances, while also giving us enough variety of angle, height and position to retain a theatrical quality within such a vast space.
More than 230 Robe iForte LTXs provided much of the long-throw power within the design. Their output and optics allowed them to work as our primary key-light fixtures across the stadium, but they were equally important as effects lights. Being able to use the same fixture system for both precise key light and stadium-scale effects gave us a huge amount of flexibility throughout the show.
The Robe iESPRITE LTL was another major part of the design, with 140 fixtures split across two very different positions. Eighty were mounted on the overhead circle rail, giving us a flatter frontal angle onto the performance area and another level within the lighting design. A further 60 were positioned on the floor around the main circular performance space, where they were used both for striking effects and extensively as crosslight. That crosslight was particularly important in retaining a theatrical quality, giving performers shape and depth despite the enormous scale of the stadium.
A further 90 Robe iFORTE Fresnels provided the audience wash, allowing the spectators to become part of the overall picture when required.
More than 220 Cameo ZENIT floods lit the architecture of San Siro itself, bringing the roof structure into the lighting compositions and allowing us to change the character of the entire stadium.
56 Chauvet ColorStrike-M surrounded the main circular floor, providing another layer for dynamic effects and sharp musical accents and a number of MDG theONE provided the haze needed.
Pixel-controlled LED tape was integrated extensively into the scenic design. The floor alone accounted for 215 DMX universes, with another two universes in the podium, 13 around the athletes’ parade ring and 10 in the flown rings, and 96 universes across the two cauldrons — 336 universes of lighting-controlled scenic pixels in total. With no video or projection used in the ceremony, these pixels became an important part of the visual canvas and were controlled entirely by the lighting department, allowing them to be programmed alongside the conventional fixtures as part of the same effects and timecoded sequences.
The audience also wore PixMob devices, providing another large-scale visual layer across the stadium. Although operated independently from the lighting control system, their contribution was considered alongside the lighting design to create the overall stadium pictures.
The entire lighting system was controlled on grandMA3. The scale of the system required a platform capable of handling the complete parameter count within a single session, while still giving the programming team the speed and flexibility needed during rehearsals.
Team
Bruno Poet - Lighting Designer
Tom Young - Lead Lighting Programmer
Max Narula - Programmer San Siro
Johanne Jensen - Associate Lighting Designer San Siro
Pietro Paulucci - Follow Spot Caller San Siro
Marc Heimendinger - Programmer Cauldrons
Matt Daw - Lighting Director Cortina
Tom Davis - Programmer Cortina
Eneas Mackintosh - Lighting Director Livigno & Predazzo
San Siro Agora Lighting Crew:
Nicola Tallino - Project Manager
Angelo Camporese - Agora' Production Manager
Emilia Catizzone - Agora' Production
Alessandro Saralli - Lighting Crew Chief
Alberto Manzone - Network Supervisor
Davide Massari - Network
Riccardo Padovan - Network
Marco Carancini - Lighting Tech
Damiano Gasparini - Lighting Tech
Nicolo Paganelli - Lighting Tech
Andrea Berto - Lighting Tech
Davis Laurino - Lighting Tech
Jacopo Germiniasi - Lighting Tech
Valentino Resta - Lighting Tech
Giuseppe Salatino - Lighting Tech
Lorenzo Petruzzi - Lighting Tech
Raffaele Iammarino - Lighting Tech
Omar Curto - Lighting Tech
Nicola Caccamo - Lighting Tech
Gianvito Annese - Lighting Tech
Luca Nespoli - Lighting Tech
Aurelio Romano - Lighting Tech
Mohamed Soltan - Lighting Tech
San Siro Follow Spot Operators:
Camilla Cerretti - Follow Spot Operator
Santo Vasadonna - Follow Spot Operator
Andrea Gaspari - Follow Spot Operator
Alessandro Capobianchi - Follow Spot Operator
Monia Giannobile - Follow Spot Operator
Alessandro Di Lallo - Follow Spot Operator
Francesco Longo - Follow Spot Operator
Luca Rastelli - Follow Spot Operator
Oliva Piccini - Follow Spot Operator
Laura Gibilaro - Follow Spot Operator
Alessandro Iaquinta - Follow Spot Operator
Gianluca Darra - Follow Spot Operator
Massimiliano Peviani - Follow Spot Operator
Emananuele Tomei - Follow Spot Operator
Ivan Lagresta - Follow Spot Operator
Giorgio Lombardi - Follow Spot Operator
Nicolò Tacconella - Follow Spot Operator
Pietro Lociero - Follow Spot Operator
Luca Dellabona - Follow Spot Operator