The 69th Eurovision Song Contest, hosted by Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR, and coordinated by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), took place in the St. Jakobshalle Arena in Basel, Switzerland in front of an audience of 6,500 people, a further 36,000 watching on screens at a nearby football stadium, a global audience of 170 million viewers and over 2bn online views.
The Eurovision Song Contest is now one of the biggest, brightest and most colorful live productions in the world, and the 2025 edition boasted the biggest rig in Eurovision history. Ayrton fixtures played a key role in Tim Routledge’s spectacular and ever-changing, metamorphic design which included the complete range of Ayrton laser-phosphor sourced fixtures Mamba, Kyalami and Cobra, as well as Domino LT, Rivale Profile and Nando 502 Wash, all supplied by London-based Neg Earth Lights. “I had a lot of options to play with in this playground,” says Routledge. Just as well for the number of performances (nearly 50 including half time and opening performances) which happen in such notoriously quick succession.
The St. Jakobshalle Arena may have been smaller than traditional Eurovision Song Contest venues, but Routledge’s lighting and Florian Wieder’s stage design defied physics and combined to produce a series of shows (two Semi-Finals and the Grand Finale) that were huge in look and magnificent in impact.
The set was dominated by a 750sq.m transparent LED screen backdrop behind the main stage and catwalk leading to a self-supporting video proscenium arch that was developed to replace the lack of overhead hanging space. The traditional Eurovision Song Contest Green Room was located opposite the stage, sandwiching the audience which surrounded the stage and catwalk and filled the space between the video proscenium arch and the enveloping arena seating.
“The venue might have been smaller but it gave us a totally black box that looked clean and fresh and not distracting on camera,” says Routledge, who chose Ayrton fixtures to create key looks in his design. Rigged upstage of the LED screen were 45 Ayrton Domino LT and 36 laser-sourced Ayrton Cobra fixtures which provided the moving light contingent behind the screen, blasting beams of light through the video output for strong blow-through effects combined with a vast 3D grid of lighting.
“The Cobra and Domino LT were great workhorse fixtures throughout the show, but one significant and distinctly different moment was during the Austrian – and this year’s winning – entry, ‘Wasted Love’ by JJ,” says Routledge. This culminated in a single, virtual lighthouse on the main LED screen, behind which a single Domino LT was positioned precisely to provide a real beam of light that projected out and dramatically swept across the audience. “The precision of Domino was paramount at this point.”
Over stage, three pairs of moving perspective trusses held 96 Ayrton Rivale Profiles which Routledge used for strong aerial beam effects. “We chose Rivale Profile because it is a compact fixture with a good gobo selection and color palette. We also needed something extremely reliable since they were rigged on constantly moving truss and readily available in the quantity we needed from Neg Earth Lights – all of which Rivale were.”
A diminutive star of the show was Ayrton Kyalami, 200 of which were rigged on three sides of the auditorium to provide reverse and cross light beam effects around the audience. 34 Ayrton Nando 502 Wash fixtures filled in for audience key lights. “Because Kyalami is such a compact unit, we were able to rig them around the entire second row of seats without interfering with sight lines,” says Routledge. “They gave us a clean line of beams which we could use to extend the beam work from those beautiful Mamba fixtures on stage out into the auditorium to give us some huge looks.”
The new Ayrton Mamba is what Routledge terms his ‘hero fixture’. Released in January this year, Mamba is the first laser-sourced IP65 fixture in Ayrton’s 6 Series, twice as powerful as its highly successful smaller sibling, Cobra, with a wide 250mm front lens that lighting designers have fallen in love with.
Routledge loaded the top and bottom edges of the rear LED screen with 100 Mamba, which lent depth and architecture to the set and lighting states, as well as a beautiful large-lens effect in the background. “I needed something with a punchy beam, great gobos, crisp beams and fabulous color matching, especially in the strong saturated colors, that could punch through the brightness of the video screen to build a lot of architectural beam light effects,” says Routledge. “I tried out the Mamba and these provided intense, crisp, architectural looks with colors that really pop on camera.”
Positional integrity was key for these looks as any light out of place would ruin such precise effects. “We had some very complex positional pallets for Mamba, but they held their positions perfectly and looked insane on camera!” confirms Routledge, citing last year’s winning entry, Nemo’s opening of the Grand Finale, as a prime example. During a reprisal of his song The Code, lighting programmer, Tom Young, knitted Mamba’s beams into a complex monochrome matrix of kinetic shapes and patterns.
This is not the first time Routledge has used Mamba, having used them on the London New Year’s Eve show, which was a very different project. “We were fortunate enough to work with Neg Earth Lights where we were able to workshop our ideas with the Ayrton products on site at their London base. We did some shoot outs and the Mamba was perfect for the job. Like the rest of the Ayrton fixtures, they have great gobos, great color homogeny, hold their positions well and are extremely reliable. Having the expertise of the UK Ayrton distributor available so locally was an ideal combination of service and supply.”
The Eurovision Song Contest Semi-Finals took place on May 13 & 15 with the Grand Finale on May 17. For those who inexplicably may have missed it, the performances and stellar production values are available to watch online. https://www.youtube.com/@EurovisionSongContest
Lighting Team
Lighting Designer: Tim Routledge
Associate LDs: James Scott & Morgan Evans
LX Programmers: Alex Mildenhall, Marc Nicholson, Tom Young
Overnight Programmers: Martin Higgins and Alex Passmore
Followspot Caller: Louisa Smurthwaite
Gaffer: Keith Duncan
Screen Content Producer: Sam Lisher|
Assoc Screen Producer: Andy Coates
Disguise Programmers: Emily Malone, Luke Collins
Main Lighting Vendor: Neg Earth Lights
Followspot Operators: Pro Spot Group
Prop LED: LED Creative
Photos ©Ralph Larmann; © Alma-Bengtsson; © Corinne Cumming; © Sarah Louise Bennett
Further information about Ayrton: www.ayrton.eu
