Event: Emaar New Year’s Eve Spectacular
Date: 31 December 2025 / 1 January 2026
Location: Burj Khalifa & Dubai Fountain, Downtown Dubai, UAE
Client: Emaar Properties
Production company: Our Legacy Creations (OLC)
Lighting design: NeonBlack (Dom Smith & Paul Johnson)
Vendor / systems: MediaPro International LLC
Role (Alexander Kotov): Lighting Systems Tech, Network Architecture

Project Overview

The Emaar New Year’s Eve Spectacular is one of the world’s most-watched live events, broadcast globally and attended by hundreds of thousands on-site in Downtown Dubai. The 2025/2026 edition introduced a 20-minute water-based performance staged across a 500 m² area on Burj Lake, with the 828-metre Burj Khalifa as backdrop.

Technical Scope

  • Over 3,000 fixtures deployed across the lake, boulevard, and Burj Khalifa facade
  • Redundant fiber ring topology for zero-failure show control across the kilometre-wide site
  • Follow-Me 3D SIX performer tracking — six systems, primary + secondary servers, tracking 24 moving objects simultaneously (autonomous rafts, performers, aerial elements)
  • Key lighting rig: Robe iFORTE LTX (86 units) + Ayrton Domino LT, engineered with custom brackets on handrails and speaker towers — no conventional rigging infrastructure existed
  • Depence previsualisation: two separate environments built for the lake show and the boulevard parade
  • Network: Luminex infrastructure, VLAN-segregated, with five cameras across the site for Follow-Me coverage
  • Four-month compressed build schedule; show deployed in an open-air, public-access environment with no backstage

Key Challenges

The performance area — a loop of water around the Dubai Fountain — had no conventional rigging infrastructure. Custom brackets were engineered for every fixture position. The kilometre-wide site required camera-based tracking across multiple servers with video-grade switching, enabling operators to hand off tracked targets between cameras seamlessly. A conductor was winched skyward mid-show, requiring live Z-axis tracking.

Press & Coverage

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