IBC Behind the Scenes: Eurovision Song Contest 2026

IBC

What began as a technical experiment in 1956 is now a global cultural institution reaching close to 170 million viewers on TV across three live shows and generating billions of views on digital platforms. IBC365 gets a tour back stage in Vienna.

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“This year we have several major innovations,” explains Michael Krön who is responsible for the Host Broadcast of Austrian broadcaster ORF and is Executive Producer of the ESC 2026. “This is especially important for a broadcaster like ORF in a year that has not been easy for the company, or for public service broadcasters globally. We want to show Austria, Europe, and the world what ORF can do. Ultimately, we want the Austrian public to feel proud that ORF, as their public service broadcaster, achieved something on this scale.”

That led to a decision that, for first time in Eurovision history, the host broadcaster would deploy a cinema‑grade camera system across nearly all acquisition points.

“We are working with ARRI cameras to create a highly cinematic look,” Krön said. “It’s the first time a show of this scale is using them as its main camera system. This allows us to capture faces and emotions with exceptional clarity which is something we always aimed for.”

The resulting hybridised broadcast‑cinema workflow, however, still operates inside a traditional HD 1080i and standard dynamic range production format.

Why 1080i still rules

Eurovision’s minimum requirement remains 1080i25, and while 1080p was evaluated, ORF’s Technical Production Lead Claudio Bortoli says the cost uplift across acquisition, routing, monitoring, and distribution made it impractical.

Instead of changing the format, ORF changed the image‑making tools.

The production is deploying 28 cameras in the Wiener Stadthalle concert venue with ARRI Alexa 35 Live as the primary source. This includes Alexa 35‑equipped rail, wire, crane and tracking systems augmented with Sony FR7 and FX6 models (four handheld and one gimbal).

“This is unprecedented for a live broadcast of this scale,” Bortoli says. “The Alexa 35’s dynamic range, colour science, and highlight handling offer a fundamentally different aesthetic from traditional broadcast cameras.”

There are some significant engineering implications. The broadcast trucks for example are optimised for system cameras (Sony, Grass Valley, Panasonic) where CCUs, RCPs, and shading workflows are tightly integrated. Cinema cameras break that model so to make integration easier conventional Canon broadcast lenses are being used (PL film lenses are used mainly in the Green Room area).

“The biggest early challenge was lens selection,” says Axel Engström, NEP’s lead technical project manager for Eurovision. “We made tests and found that cine lenses didn’t suit a large arena or the directors’ workflow. We switched to broadcast lenses for most positions to maintain zoom range and operational flexibility.”

NEP replaced or adapted CCUs to interface with Alexa systems in its trucks and ahis proved straightforward.

According to ARRI Managing Director, David Bermbach the first priority was proving reliability. “You need to deliver the baseline so people trust you. Now that we’ve done that, we can start adding new ideas.”

A major creative goal this year was giving each performance a distinct visual identity. Using profiles from ARRI (it has over 70 in its arsenal) the team created around 30 different LUTs (almost one per entry) which are applied at the camera head. One popular look was inspired by a music video by Justin Bieber.

In the weeks leading up to the broadcast, a colour grader fine‑tuned the camera looks for each performance before this was loaded into a LiveEdit automation system. During the show this software automatically sends commands, including cuts and moves, directly to the camera network.

Engström explains, “During the live show, the vision mixer is hands‑off since everything is pre‑programmed. If a camera fails, LiveEdit can automatically replace all shots from that camera with another although the vision mixer operator can also override manually.”

He explains that team delegations met with the show’s broadcast directors during the winter to present their creative ideas. “They submit staging scripts once songs are ready and then we rehearse with stand‑ins at first. We send those recordings back to delegations for feedback so by the time the artists arrive in Vienna the staging is already well‑developed.”

The final look was only locked shortly before rehearsals, in collaboration with the head vision shader, lighting designer, and directors.

Essential OB provision

Since 2015 which was also hosted by ORF in the same venue and with Bortoli playing a similar role, the broadcaster’s resources have been cut.

Bortoli says ORF now uses internal leads supported by a large freelance engineering pool. NEP provides the OB infrastructure, continuing a multi‑year partnership that gives both sides a shared operational vocabulary.

Eurovision traditionally deploys a main and backup truck but ORF is taking a more sophisticated approach in which both trucks will operate simultaneously.

Although both trucks are identically equipped, NEP’s UHD24 is covering interval acts, pre‑show, and non‑competitive elements like moderation directed by ORF’s Michael Kögler while the UHD24 in command of Swedish multi-cam director Robin Hofwander handles all the live acts.

“If one truck fails, the other can assume full control,” explains Bortoli. “All the camera feeds are available to both trucks and the routing matrices are mirrored. That means operators can switch roles with minimal disruption.”

It is what he calls a “live‑redundant architecture”, not a regular standby model.

The voting sequence is handled partly in the OB truck, with the EBU switch and distribution team operating from a dedicated cabin adjacent to the OB compound. All international routing, failover management, and signal integrity checks occur there.

Laser-based lighting

For the first time, an all LED and laser-based system is used, completely replacing traditional lighting and “significantly” reducing energy consumption and material usage, claim organisers. The lighting design is by Tim Routledge, a BAFTA winner for the lighting design of ESC 2023 in Liverpool who also worked on Basel last year.

He says the challenge was to create something that looks impressive, while at the same time being much less wasteful of energy.

“The fact that we are relying 100 percent on LED and laser technology on this scale shows that you can have both spectacular images and sustainable production.”

The overall visual concept includes more than 28,000 individually controllable LEDs. Eighty high-speed winches provide movable lighting effects—which is claimed as a first for Eurovision. Gear was supplied and rigged by Neg Earth Lighting and ACME Lighting.

The Stadthalle’s roof load limits forced the lighting team to redesign the rig multiple times. This included snow‑load modelling, since even 5–10 cm of snow could exceed structural tolerances.

“This amount of weight (from the lighting rig) has never been in the Stadthalle before,” Bortoli notes.

Video wall control

Creative Technology, part of NEP Group, is providing all LED screens and display solutions for the event.

The video wall is 2.50 sqm of ROE Graphite 2.6mm pixel pitch and the 2.68sqm LED floor is built from ROE Black Marble 4.6mm panels. Completing the wrap-around visual backdrop is a 12x8m curved infinity screen.

Video is processed through 16 Megapixel Helios 8K LED Controllers with ST2110 input with playout managed by eight Disguise servers capable of 32 x 4K feeds over ST2110.

Riedel provides the venue-wide signal distribution using MediorNet with around 25 nodes deployed across the venue. Timecode is distributed through MediorNet to sync lighting, cameras, and automation.

NEP uses its own TFC control platform in the TV compound to route signals, manage morte than 400 monitors, and to handle switching between the two OB trucks.

Audio mixing and RF density

Dietmar Tinhof is one of four audio engineers mixing the broadcast for stereo and 5.1 working out of two ORF supplied vans. “The acts are so different,” he says. “You switch from delicate acoustic folk to full‑force heavy metal. Some delegations say, ‘Make it sound like the record.’ Others send a several pages of technical notes. We try to follow them, but live situations have limitations, particularly around latency. For example, we can't use every plugin because they need a certain amount of processing time.”

They aim to have everything automated: “Ideally, during the live show we’d be sipping red wine because everything is programmed,” he added, but a recent Pro Tools bug changed that: “We can’t explain it. So we’re not as relaxed as before.”

Live performers also add unpredictability: “Sometimes they sing louder in the live show, so we counterbalance that. But we don’t do fine‑tuned automation live. There’s no reverb throws or EQ tweaks.”

Redundancy is extreme: “We have six layers of safety. Two identical Pro Tools systems monitor the MADI stream. If one sample drops, we’re already on the other machine. If there’s a deeper failure, the OB van is a complete mirror. If Pro Tools dies, we can still run on the MC²  Lawo. Six degrees of redundancy.”

The production format is stereo + 5.1 surround contributed from more than 70 Sennheiser RF mics and 40 open mics across the arena.

“The RF environment is one of the most congested in European live production,” Bortoli says.  “Our engineering team must coordinate frequency planning across dozens of delegations and use intermodulation avoidance.”

Redundant antenna distribution and failover paths for critical vocal mics are other considerations.

Eurovision by tech numbers

For those who like numbers:

The budget for the contest is estimated to be €36 million with local Viennese authorities paying €22m and the EBU contributing around €5m.

Over the course of the week at least 4,000 media files will be recorded and processed; 17,500+ camera cuts generated and executed; and 10,000+ review and validation comments logged by 80 operators tracking and annotating the show in real-time.

It requires 250 people to operate the Eurovision broadcast, among them; three multicam directors and 32 camera operators.

Nearly 200 SFX machines produce effects including flames, low fog, sparkulars, pyrotechnics, ECO2JET, and smoke.

It is calculated that 4.2TB of data will be sent every second of a live show over the 100GB network infrastructure.

Over the entire duration of ESC the total amount of data transported through this network is estimated between 5-6 Petabyte. To put that in context, 6PB equals approximately 101 years of continuously streamed HD video.

Postcards from Austria

Eurovision’s interstitial storytelling elements called ‘postcards’ were also shot on Alexa (by local production company Gebhardt Productions), giving them the same colour science as the live show.

Despite the rise of TikTok‑style formats and an astonishing 750 million views of ESC 2025 content on the platform, ORF is not generating a dedicated vertical feed. Social media teams will capture their own content using mobile and ENG devices.

That said, individual broadcasters are going social. Norway’s NRK is engaging audiences with an interactive ‘ESC 70’ online quiz alongside dedicated video content. Sweden’s SVT is expanding its digital offering with Eurovision Klubben on SVT Play. Ukraine’s Suspilne is delivering extensive multi-platform coverage, including three studio pre-shows on its YouTube channel.

For Bortoli, the biggest challenge is the timeline. “Time always moves very fast at Eurovision,” he says. “But everything looks good. The engineering fundamentals are solid.”