Yekaterinburg
Light Festival

How to get 300,000+ people to see your show when it's bloody -22ºF freezing

Yekaterinburg, Russia

Over an hour of visuals by over 120 designers

Chances are, you might have heard of Yekaterinburg — the fourth-largest Russian city, located close to Ural Mountains and Siberia. The all-time lowest temperature recorded was -52ºF in 1978, which conveniently reinforces the major stereotype you might have about Russia. On the Christmas Eve of 2016 Yekaterinburg hosted the Light Festival, and we, well, sort of made the whole thing happen.

Over 120 designers across Russia participated in this project, and together we created over an hour of visuals in total: historical segments about the Ural region, music videos, Christmas-themed sketches, and various light and laser shows.

The festival was on for two weeks, and over 300,000 people went to see it, despite the freezing cold. The equipment we used was definitely never designed to work under these conditions, so we were in fact surprised ourselves that nothing went wrong. Or so we say.