SINGAPORE: Singapore’s National Day Parade (NDP) 2026 marked the nation’s 61st birthday with a return to the National Stadium for the first time in a decade. Staged before approximately 42,000 to 45,000 spectators, the celebration centred on the theme “Go Beyond Self” and the wider “Go Beyond!” spirit.  Spanning the length of a football field, the stage was the largest performance space created for an NDP to date. Its sheer scale placed exceptional demands on the lighting design, which had to illuminate performers across the stadium, remain effective from multiple viewing angles and contribute significantly to the storytelling.

To realise Lighting Director Michael Chan’s ( Lighting Insomnia ) vision, The Show Company made a substantial investment in 430 Ayrton EagleStrike fixtures, four grandMA3 full-size consoles, eight grandMA3 Processing Unit XL units, two PU L units and two PU M units. The Ayrton and MA Lighting equipment was supplied and supported by Total Solution Marketing. The result was a visually powerful production filled with bold colours, fast-moving effects and carefully shaped theatrical moments.

Michael began developing the lighting design in July 2025, following his first discussion with Creative Director Brian Gothong Tan. “It was clear from that first meeting that the lighting for this NDP needed to be bigger and more exciting than in previous years,” Michael recalls.

The National Stadium’s size naturally called for a design with greater impact. However, lighting also had to take on a more prominent creative role because several familiar outdoor NDP elements—including the Red Lions parachutists, armoured vehicles and jet flypast—were not part of the stadium programme. Viewing of the fireworks was also restricted. “The lighting had to do more of the heavy lifting in creating dynamism for the show,” says Michael. “People have described the design and overall experience as ‘concertlike’, and that was a deliberate choice on our part.”

Creating spectacle was only one part of the challenge. With the stadium roof closed and audiences viewing the performance from multiple directions, the lighting also needed to guide attention and support the narrative without overwhelming the other visual elements. Chapter 3, “Go Beyond Our Size”, explored Singapore’s beginnings as a seafaring settlement. Native animals including sea turtles, dugongs and mouse deer appeared as larger-than-life, self-illuminated puppets and props. Rather than competing with these elements, the lighting was deliberately restrained at key moments.

“We had to know when to pull back on the lighting effects and let the puppets shine through on their own,” Michael explains. The following chapter, “Go Beyond Time”, required a completely different visual language. Taking audiences through Singapore’s television history, media campaigns and popular culture, the segment moved rapidly between familiar theme songs, energetic sequences and slower ballads. “That chapter called for lighting that moved like music—snappy, fast and energetic changes that could drop into a slow ballad and mood in an instant,” says Michael. “We would jump from one television series theme song to another within seconds.”  The rig and control infrastructure therefore had to accommodate an enormous number of fixture cues, programming changes and lastminute edits within a compressed production schedule.

More than 1,600 lighting fixtures were deployed across the National Stadium, with some units positioned hundreds of metres apart. The design needed to generate broad washes capable of covering large groups of performers while retaining the precision to isolate an individual singer.  Adding to the programming load were 350 LED bars, each requiring control across 112 channels. Altogether, the production encompassed approximately 185 universes of parameters distributed across a stadium floor measuring around 75,000 square metres.

At the heart of the design were the Ayrton EagleStrike fixtures, which Michael describes as “the most important fixture in the whole rig”.  Serving as the principal key light, the EagleStrikes were responsible for illuminating faces and performers throughout the stadium. This required more than high white-light output. The fixtures had to retain their brightness, colour quality and visual impact while producing saturated washes and projected gobo effects over substantial distances.

Beyond their primary key-light duties, the fixtures were also used extensively for powerful attacks, aerial movements and ballyhoo effects. Fast, accurate pan-and-tilt movement and responsive dimming were consequently essential to the production’s concert-like energy. “The EagleStrike did everything we asked of it,” says Michael. “Across more than two months of setup and the full show run, we only ran into issues with two units out of the 424 deployed, which is very impressive in terms of reliability.”

For The Show Company, selecting the EagleStrike followed a careful evaluation of the limited number of fixtures capable of meeting the venue’s requirements. “After looking at the available options, EagleStrike was definitely one of the fixtures that stood out and ticked all the right boxes,” explains Joseph Gan of The Show Company. “Following further research and internal testing, we decided to proceed with it—and it turned out to be a great decision.”

The fixtures’ reliability was particularly important given the scale and national significance of the production. “They performed beyond our expectations and delivered exactly what we needed throughout the event. Their astonishing reliability gave us the confidence and peace of mind required for such a large and important production.”

The grandMA3 platform was selected for its performance, scalability, networking capabilities and ability to manage the production’s extensive fixture count and data requirements. Michael’s familiarity with the grandMA ecosystem was another important consideration. The Show Company positioned the grandMA3 full-size consoles and Processing Units primarily within the central control room, enabling the technical team to monitor the system closely throughout rehearsals and live performances.

A ring fibre network connected the control system to third-party nodes distributed around the venue. This allowed sACN data to be transmitted efficiently to lighting systems within the different performance zones. With the grandMA3 system supporting up to 1,024 DMX universes, the approximately 185 universes required for NDP 2026 remained comfortably within its capacity. The configuration also provided the redundancy essential for a live national event. “We needed a minimum of 1x redundancy on both the consoles and the processing units,” Chan explains. “With the Processing Unit XLs and full-size consoles, we had sufficient capacity to fully back up the system.”

Timecode was used as the principal means of synchronising lighting with video, audio, pyrotechnics, special effects and other production departments. The ability to run both main and backup timecode sources strengthened the system’s resilience, while compatibility with sACN, Art-Net and MANet provided the flexibility to communicate with nodes and switches from other manufacturers. The stability of the grandMA3 hardware also helped simplify installation and commissioning. Once the central architecture had been established, the team could integrate the various network nodes and endpoints, verify data distribution and identify problems efficiently. This allowed more time to be devoted to programming and refining the show instead of resolving infrastructure issues.

For Michael, one of the grandMA3 platform’s most valuable creative tools was its selection grid. Fixtures and pixels could be arranged in the layout or 3D views and mapped directly to the grid, allowing the programming team to select and manipulate them in almost any orientation. “The MA3 selection grid has to be the most powerful feature I can think of,” he says. “Pair that with the multi-step phaser engine, and we can pretty much create any effect we can dream up.”

The newer PhaserRecipe workflow also combined familiar Mode2-style simplicity with the more advanced capabilities offered by Mode3. “It brings together the ease of Mode2—where you can edit and see all your attributes and functions in one simple view—with the power of Mode3’s multi-step phasers and selection grid,” Michael explains.

Equally important was the system’s ability to deliver this creative flexibility without compromising responsiveness or reliability. “The greatest benefit was the sheer power to control and programme thousands of parameters and lights without lag, and without worrying about the network failing,” says Michael. “There was no real sense of a ceiling on what we could design or programme.”

For The Show Company, the equipment acquisition also represents an investment beyond NDP 2026. The consoles, Processing Units and fixtures can be deployed across future productions, allowing the company to build on a proven platform while maximising its long-term value.

At NDP 2026, that combination of powerful lighting, scalable control and dependable network infrastructure enabled technology to remain largely invisible while its creative impact filled the stadium. From intimate storytelling moments to sweeping concertscale effects, lighting did far more than illuminate the performance—it helped carry the emotion, energy and ambition of a nation going beyond.