GLOBAL: Fifty years ago, Claypaky was founded on an idea that was far more radical than simply building better stage lights: light could become part of the performance itself. On 28 August 1976, Pasquale Quadri “Paky” established the company in northern Italy, bringing together his early passion for music, photography and optics to pursue a different vision of entertainment lighting. Five decades later, that philosophy has taken Claypaky from the dance floor to the world’s biggest concerts, theatres, television productions and live events, while helping define several of the categories that now underpin professional entertainment lighting.

The roots of that story actually pre-date the company’s official foundation. Claypaky’s first fixture, the CP-LX3, dates to 1972, when the company was still conceived around disco lighting. At a time when entertainment lighting was largely static and colour changes could involve manually inserting gel filters, Quadri saw an opportunity to make light dynamic and responsive to music.

The Astrodisco, launched in 1982, used a single lamp and multiple lenses to generate dozens of simultaneous beams. Astroraggi followed a year later, projecting more than 100 pulsating beams across European dance floors. These were not simply new fixtures; they demonstrated the creative possibilities that emerged when lighting became an active component of entertainment.

Claypaky’s breakthrough into moving light technology arrived in 1988 with Golden Scan, the first moving mirror fixture, or scanner, to incorporate microstepper motors. The technology brought a new level of precision to fixture movement and helped Golden Scan become a market leader and industry benchmark for more than a decade. Its influence even escaped the lighting industry when British band Klaxons drew inspiration from the fixture for the title of their 2007 hit “Golden Skans”.

The company continued to push the category with Miniscan, described as the world’s first compact scanner, followed by Super Scan Zoom in 1994, which combined CMY colour mixing with zoom in a single fixture. As professional lighting moved increasingly into concert touring, theatre, television and large-scale events during the 1990s, Claypaky expanded its technology accordingly.

The Stage Line, introduced in 1999 as a family of six moving body projectors ranging from 300 to 1,200 watts, became a reference for major productions. Stage Profile 1200 subsequently introduced a sophisticated patented framing system capable of producing a distinctive “curtain effect” with a single blade, extending the creative control available from a moving fixture.

Then came the beam era. The Alpha Beam 300, launched in 2008, helped establish the beam moving light as a distinct category, producing a narrow, solid and sharply focused column of light rather than the broad cone associated with conventional fixtures. Claypaky took the concept even further with Sharpy in 2010. At approximately 19 kilograms and consuming just 189 watts, Sharpy delivered a level of output from such a compact fixture that it rapidly became one of the most successful moving heads in entertainment lighting history. Its adoption across virtually every sector of the industry and the numerous Innovation Awards it received reflected the scale of its influence.

Claypaky subsequently broadened the creative possibilities again. B-Eye combined wash, beam and effects functions within a single LED moving head, while Mythos introduced another generation of hybrid fixtures. In 2019, Xtylos became the world’s first moving head using an RGB laser source, opening another technological category.

The company’s more recent development has included fixtures designed specifically for theatre, including Sinfonya and Rhapsodya, with their high-quality light output and CRI alongside patented technical innovations. In 2024, the Ultimo family arrived, including Ultimo Hybrid and Ultimo Sharpy, the latter an IP66-rated evolution of the original Sharpy concept.

That progression can be seen across some of the world’s most demanding productions. For more than 20 years, Claypaky has been a lighting technology partner of the Eurovision Song Contest, while its fixtures have also featured in the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Olympic Games opening ceremonies, FIFA World Cup, World Expos, Disney on Ice and Holiday on Ice. Its relationship with Cirque du Soleil stretches back to the 1990s, while concert touring has taken Claypaky technology onto productions by the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Beyoncé, Shakira, Elton John, Justin Timberlake, Ed Sheeran, Metallica, Rammstein, Coldplay and Bad Bunny, including the latter’s spectacular 2026 tour.

The technology has also found permanent homes in venues including the Bolshoi Theatre, Royal Albert Hall, Opéra Garnier, Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. In television and broadcast, Claypaky fixtures have been used by RAI, Mediaset, Sky, BBC and NBC.

Behind that global footprint sits a corporate history that has seen the company change ownership several times. Claypaky became part of the OSRAM Group in 2014, the same year founder Pasquale Quadri passed away. In 2016, it acquired ADB Lighting Technologies, expanding its theatre and broadcast activities through ADB Stagelight. ARRI acquired Claypaky in March 2023, before the company became part of EK Lights in May 2025, bringing it into the operation of a long-standing development partner and international professional lighting player.

Claypaky maintains that the new ownership structure provides a stronger industrial platform and new opportunities for international growth, while ensuring that the essential identity of Claypaky remains unchanged. The company continues to be headquartered in Seriate, its product development remains rooted in Italy, and the Claypaky brand continues to be at the centre of its activities. Around 95 percent of its production is exported through a network spanning more than 80 countries, giving an Italian lighting manufacturer a remarkably broad presence across the global entertainment industry.

Now, as Claypaky approaches its sixth decade, the company’s history is, in many respects, a history of professional lighting repeatedly being asked to do more; move faster, become smaller, produce more output, create new effects and ultimately become part of the visual language of a production. According to Claypaky, its next phase increasingly encompasses cloud platforms, IoT, software and digital services, with innovation moving “beyond the light source” to consider how lighting hardware can operate within a wider technology ecosystem.