Robe brings GigaPointe power to ULTRA Europe 2026
Over 250 Robe moving lights – 264 to beprecise– including 54of the brand’s new laser-source GigaPointes – took centre stage at ULTRA Europe 2026, assisting the spectacular visual experience across the festival's Main and RESISTANCE stages in Split,Croatia.
ULTRA Europe’s Main Stage production design is created by Richard Milstein and Ray Steinman, with Ray also taking on the roles of production manager and executive producer, working closely with MOJO Rental Southeast Europe, led by Zoran Biškupić and Sven Grbec, who were responsible for the festival's overall technical production and infrastructure.
MOJO supplied the equipment, crew and technical support, including an extensive selection of Robe fixtures, and for both Main and RESISTANCE Stage lighting, received significant support from its project partner, Event Lighting from Slovenia, led on site by Uroš Faganelj.
The Main Stage house lighting rig this year included 12 x Robe GigaPointes, 52 x FORTES – comprising 44 standard FORTES and 8 x iFORTES, 60 x Spiiders and 98 x MegaPointes.
The house lighting is designed, programmed and co-ordinated by Alex “Junior” Cerio of JuniorCorp. He also co-ordinates all the FOH logistics and guest LDs, ensuring they receive all the pre-viz time needed and that their showfiles are primed, ready and waiting for when their artist takes to the stage.
RESISTANCE featured 42 x GigaPointes on a rig designed by Serafin Gonzalez, and these were scattered around the over-audience trusses traversing the length of the room and helped keep the rhythms pumping and the energy surging from front to back!
The Main Stage was divided into three sections – centre plus left and right wings – with the DJ booth in the middle, surrounded by all the LED and lighting which helped move the energy off the stage and right to the back of the field. As you can imagine, LDs this year were super excited to get hands-on with Robe’s new GigaPointes.
The 12 x Main Stage GigaPointes were extremely strategically placed along the low corners of the two wings, on the bottom edges of the lowest segments of LED screen. This made sense for the wide camera shots from the booms in the field, which were positioned just in front each side, so each time the cranes swung by, a combined force of GigaPointe and MegaPointe beams punched through the shots.
Alessandro Scotellaro, ULTRA Europe’s laserist from Effetto Laser, Milan, who also worked alongside Junior as lighting programmer / operator for Main Stage, reckons the “GigaPointe is a great upgrade – the beam is VERY uniform and even, and the colours are super bright!”
Fabian Fisniku, LD for Martin Garrix, loves the GigaPointe beam shaper function: “Overall, it’s been developed so it isvery nice to programme, using it in conjunction with MegaPointes is convenient and user-friendly from a console perspective.”
Matthew Dean from So Far So Good Studio and LD for German “Clouds” DJ BUNT was delighted to see that GigaPointe “has all the punch and speed of MegaPointe while being a next-generation fixture.” He is still
always happy to see MegaPointes on site and looks forward to “getting to know the GigaPointe in the same way.”
Jade Fraser of 1826 Studio and LD for Calvin Harris thinks that the GigaPointe “is great, a super impressive output, and still such a versatile fixture with good optics and colours.”
Junior himself observed that EDM festival productions are hard on all fixtures, and “GigaPointe does a brilliant job ofdealing with 10 or more LDs, searing heat and sometimes torrents of rain on the same day … whilst delivering a great quality of output!”
Serafin Gonzalez, global LD for RESISTANCE, with 42 on his stage had more GigaPointe experience than anyone at ULTRA Europe 2026. He was impressed with how “well balanced and uniform the output is across multiple fixtures, including at low intensities,” also noting how well the colours blend and mix. “Even in the darker shades, they are capable of well-defined movements, particularly at high speeds!”
This year, Robe’s FORTE was chosen for all the Main Stage key lights and specials – with a concentration of them on five chevron-shaped trusses in the middle of the central section.
Four of the eight iFORTES were upstage on flightcases providing celestial DJ lighting with the other four rigged high up in mirroring positions on a downstage centre truss – for direct keys / DJ specials. This position was also one of the most exposed positions to the elements, so the IP rated fixture was essential there.
As Junior noted, IP rated fixtures are now essential for any outdoor event during summer in Europe, as the weather patterns are so erratic.
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