An array of Claypaky lighting fixtures, including Volero Cubes, Arolla Aqua LT, Arolla Aqua, Sharpy X Frames and HY B-EYE K25s, was chosen by Lighting Designer Tim Routledge to illuminate the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 (ESC) held at the St. Jakobshalle arena in Basel, Switzerland.
The 69th edition of the fan-favorite competition, organized by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, featured two live semi-finals and a live finale during which “Wasted Love,” by Austrian artist JJ, was selected the winner. Participants from 37 countries competed with the contest viewed by an estimated 170 million people worldwide.
No stranger to ESC, Routledge won a coveted BAFTA Television Craft Award last year for his work on the ESC 2023 telecast from Liverpool. He also won the Royal Television Society Award for Multi-Camera Lighting for that show.
This year, the theme of ESC was “Unity Shapes Love,” with variably colored miniatures of the Eurovision heart symbolizing the unity of millions of people celebrating the contest. Production Designer Florian Wieder, who designed the sets of seven previous ESCs, created a stage design inspired by host country Switzerland’s topography and linguistic diversity. It was highlighted by a 750 square-meter transparent upstage LED screen, mountain set pieces, a 25 square-meter black video floor and a massive rectangular video arch, whose four sides symbolized Switzerland’s four national languages, framing the front of the stage
Routledge was tasked with creating a dynamic overall look for the show as well as tailoring his rig to the unique visual looks of each participant. “The St. Jakobshalle venue is quite compact and brought us challenges,” he notes. “We hung 24 automated rib trusses over the stage, and used a total of 4,500 lights, 1,800 of them behind the transparent LED screen.”
He explains that his lighting design “stemmed from Florian’s set design, which featured lots of layers and playing with perspective. Claypaky fixtures are really good at creating perspective.” London-based Neg Earth Lights was the ESC’s lighting vendor.
Claypaky Arolla Aqua LT LED moving heads, with precise, narrow long-throw beams, proved to be workhorse fixtures with 96 mounted on 12 of the rig’s 24 kinetic ribs. “They were super bright and great, solid workhorse fixtures,” says Routledge. “We used them in Follow-Me [remote tracking] mode so we could take control of them at any time.”
Additionally, 34 Arolla Aqua were deployed; eight were in the Green Room, which this year was incorporated in the stage design and not located behind the stage. The rest of the fixtures delivered lighting effects in the floor package “as strobes, washes and eye candy,” says Routledge.
He surrounded the entire edge of the stage with 119 Volero Cubes, compact, high-performance LED fixtures that merge beam, wash and strobe effects with pixel-to-pixel control. He positioned 87 on a stage shelf as floor lights with 36 of them on lifts around the main stage area. Another 32 Volero Cubes were flown on a truss above the stage’s Green Room. “The Volero Cubes were chosen as a neat and powerful floor light to edge the entire main stage, catwalk and frame stage,” Routledge continues. ”Tying beautifully into the 3D grid nature of the rest of the design – the square faced fixtures with the cross shaped grid worked beautifully as a nod to the grid and also the Swiss flag. A large number were also placed on Wahlberg lifts enabling me to create different architectures and have the ability to hide them lower than the height of the stage when not in play.”
One hundred-sixteen Sharpy X Frame multi-function, hybrid luminaires were flown to light the back of the audience. Seventy HY B-EYE K25 moving lights with wash/beam/effects functions, were also flown to serve as floodlights.
“I had used Claypaky fixtures on ESC 2023 with great success and found the Claypaky team to always be really helpful,” Routledge reports. So it was logical to turn again to Claypaky for their latest Arolla Aqua and Volero Cube fixtures as well as tried-and-true solutions such as Sharpy X Frames and K25s. “We have a wonderful synergy and a solid relationship,” he declares.
Further information about Claypaky: www.claypaky.com
