Robe shines at the TPi Awards 2026

Robe Lighting was proud to be the production lighting supplier for the TPi Awards 2026, staged at Evolution in Battersea, London, UK, and once again ensured that the room shimmered with colour, vibrance and style that helped rock the glamour for one of the production entertainment industry’s BIGGEST nights of the year!

Over 300 Robe lighting fixtures were on the lighting rig, designed and curated especially for the room by Robe’s in-house creative team led by lighting director Nathan Wan, working closely with associate LD Andy Webb to deliver lighting based on a sparkly glitterball-tastic theme. Andy produced the music track in conjunction with the TPi team whilst Nathan and the rest of the team were pre-vizzing the lighting using Capture in the week ahead of the event. They were supported by a crew of seven NRG (Next Robe Generation) students picked from four different colleges around the UK.

The idea was to make the just-launched GigaPointe – a super-bright, multifunctional, laser light source product – prominent on the rig and especially during the hi-energy 1 minute and 10 second visual spectacle that signals the start of the Awards ceremony, so a letterbox element was built into the screen at the back of the stage and filled with 23 x GigaPointes.

Another 8 x GigaPointes were dotted along the back of the stage and around the sides at floor level, and 40 in total were used for the show.

70 x SVB1s – a multisource effect, beam and wash luminaire – were dotted around all over the rig. They are currently a favourite for their versatility and compact form, and these were spread out over the venue’s various roof trusses with some on the deck.

They are a perfect fixture for creating twinkling eye candy looks. 16 x SVB1 4Bars were mounted on the top part of the curved screen trusses to highlight the screen, accenting the depth it brought to the space and also the curve of the screen, which was such a defining set piece of the room.

As the video screen consumed a lot of infrastructure over the stage area, there were fewer positions available here for lighting, so Nathan had to think smartly about where to place lights for maximum effect. 32 x iESPRITE LTL fixtures were used extensively on the advanced trusses above the room, where they were ideal for creating special effects, dappling and texturing around the space, together with a total of 40 of Robe’s compact iPAINTE LTM wash beams. Also on the rig were 12 x SVOPATTS for eye candy and to add depth to the stage for that iconic retro light curtain look.

Thinking out of the box, the design objective was to show off the flexibility of all these Robe fixtures, so the 36 x WTF! strobe / floods were utilised as the main wash lighting fixtures, as well as for a few retinal surprise moments!

Onstage key lighting for the awards presentations and general front lighting was provided by a combination of seven T1 and T2 Profiles also rigged on the front trusses. Prominent on the design were 10 x iBOLTS in the room, 4 in the roof trusses and 6 on three podiums a side used for all the hi-impact effects looks, especially during the time coded intro that kicked off the awards presentation segment. They were also used to zap a 2-metre mirror ball rigged 20 ft into the main room.

This was done to illustrate just how safely and effectively iBOLTS can be used as part of an indoor show with the highly innovative ScanGuard system.

This is a patented Robe geo-fencing system, incorporating LIDAR technology to scan the surrounding area, identifying and locking out unsafe zones.

If an object encroaches within a safe working distance, the system automatically cuts the fixture output to prevent accidents. 6 x iFORTE LTX FS follow spots running on 6 x RoboSpot systems were sited around the room perimeter, used for the presenters and all the awards pick-ups – a very fast-moving part of the evening where being quick and accurate is essential to identify and pick up the winner before they walk to the stage.

The lighting brief has also been extended to include some WOW factors outside the Evolution venue to ramp up the excitement. This year, the installation featured 9 x iBOLTS, together with 6 x WTF!s used as asymmetrical floods to light up some parked up trucks from ETL Logistics and Trucking By. These fixtures are also IP rated and wireless for outdoor use, but this year, rain and bad weather were thankfully not an issue.

www.robe.cz

Photos © Marko Polasek