Switzerland - Robe was an official technical partner of Eurovision 2025 in Basel, where lighting designer Tim Routledge and his team, together with London UK-based lighting supplier Neg Earth Lights, helped deliver an outstanding production for the world’s largest live music broadcast event, staged this year at the St. Jakobshalle arena by Swiss host broadcaster SRG SSR, co-ordinated by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union).
The stage and production design by Florian Wieder included an impressive 750sq.m of transparent upstage LED screen, striking mountain set pieces and a three-dimensional industrial scale video frame at the front which defined the space. This worked in conjunction with a 250sq.m black video floor, assorted other video and mapped surfaces including scenic mountains plus approximately 4,500 lights to deliver nearly 50 distinctive individual performance environments.
The Robe elements included 180 x SVB1 and 72 x iForte LTXs moving lights, plus 36 Svopatt static multi-source units and 40 LEDBeam 150s which were ensconced in the set.
The lighting system was ground supported to gain height and additional weight loading, overseen by Johannes Schau from BigRig.
The Robe iFortes were all used for key lighting, with some running on 12 x RoboSpot remote follow BaseStations.
These Robe assets helped Tim ramp up the energy, glitz, glamour, and zaniness of an array of highly individually presented songs, meeting the ambitious visual demands of 37 competing delegations, whittled down to 26 finalists competing for the 2025 title.
On top of these, across the two televised Semi-Finals and Grand Finale were an additional 11 show openers and interval acts with full stage and lightshows.
Tim had previously lit Eurovision 2023 in Liverpool, a critically acclaimed show co-hosted by the UK and Ukraine who were the 2022 winners, and he was delighted to be back as part of the winning technical/creative production bid for this one.
The SVB1s were rigged prominently on the over-stage flying trusses, positioned closely together for max effect and utilised for a range of full-on whizzy pixel and strobing effects to gently undulating kinetic chases, as well as contributing to the numerous beamy looks that dominated the night. “They look phenomenal especially when bunched up tightly like that,” commented Tim.
24 over-stage trusses were all on an automation system, allowing Tim to create different architectural looks for each artist, boosting the dynamics of the space, while the depth was further accentuated by the considerable number of lights rigged upstage of the screen. The surface could be revealed or melted away with lighting according to the overall visual look of each participant.
The Svopatts were rigged upstage, positioned for throwing blocks of high-quality light into this area below the depth. This new Robe product features nine individual modules each containing seven 40W RGBW multichips and a centre pixel also with a 200W white LED strobe. The modules can be used in beam, wash or effects mode and the fixture generates over 75.000 lumens output at the integrating sphere.
The units were hidden out of shot, but contributed some significant work behind the set, punching in volumes of light right behind the physical mountains. “It was more about getting a volume of light in the right place than it being flashy and in-the-face with them in this context,” explained Tim.
iFortes were positioned all over the rig for multi-angle coverage and, as said earlier, they were used for most of the followspot work and all the essential key lighting.
“Doing a Eurovision Song Contest is a lot of hard work, so you must want to be there, teamwork is vital, and on top of that, we have fun as well as delivering our best imaginative ideas - because this is the spirit of Eurovision,” elucidated Tim.
This year, Tim managed a bigger core team of 14 people than he had in Liverpool, as the lighting control department was also in charge of programming the playback video content for all the delegations.
Tim’s gaffer was Keith Duncan with Mark Henry as his best boy, James Scott and Morgan Evans were his two associate lighting designers.
The programmers were Alex Mildenhall and Tom Young on moving lights, with Marc Nicholson on key lights, working closely with overnight programmers Alex Passmore and Martin Higgins.
Louisa Smurthwaite co-ordinated and called all the followspots co-ordinating with 14 professional operators from UK-based follow-spotting specialist, Pro Spot.
Tim’s video department was led by producer Sam Lisher working alongside programmer/technicians Andy Coates, Luke Collins and Emily Malone.
Neg Earth’s lighting project manager was Lindsey Markham who managed the technical details and lighting crew working under Keith Duncan.
They were part of a 250-person show ‘run crew’ who ensured that the multicamera extravaganza – directed by lead multicamera director Robin Hofwander – ran seamlessly and spectacularly on the night.
Eurovision 2025 – the 69th edition of the song contest event – was a fusion of music, madness and magic enjoyed live by approximately 6,500 people in St. Jakobshalle arena; with 36,000 watching on giant screens in the adjacent football stadium serving as an ‘overflow’ area for the broadcast that was seen by an estimated 170m viewers worldwide.
