Drone Light Show: From Fireworks to ABB Robots

A drone light show uses hundreds or thousands of small quadcopters, each carrying a bright LED, to draw pictures in the night sky. Every drone flies its own pre-programmed path, and together they spell out words and draw shapes and moving scenes that a firework could never hold in place. The first shows flew in 2012, and by 2026 the records are counted in tens of thousands of drones. This post traces the step from fireworks to the first drone swarms, looks at the record-breaking shows of the past few weeks, and asks where ABB robots fit, from building and packing drones to robots that perform on stage.

Drones spell out Telluride and a pickaxe over the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, September 2026. Photo: Hannah Clover / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

From gunpowder rockets to the first drone swarms

For centuries, lights in the night sky meant fireworks. The earliest came from China during the Song dynasty, when people packed gunpowder into paper tubes to make firecrackers. Fireworks were made in Europe by the 14th century and had become popular by the 17th, and in 1749 London staged its Royal Fireworks to celebrate a peace treaty. Bright colours came much later. In 1786 Berthollet found that potassium chlorate gave a violet flame, and later work with barium, strontium and copper salts produced the bright greens, reds and blues of a modern show.

Fireworks bursting over Liuyang in Hunan, China, 2010. Photo: Haluk Comertel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

The first drone displays appeared in 2012. In June that year the studio Marshmallow Laser Feast presented Meet Your Creator at a Cannes Lions event in France. In September the Ars Electronica Futurelab flew its Spaxels swarm over the Danube in Linz for the Klangwolke music festival, and the Futurelab calls it the world's first large outdoor formation drone flight. Each drone followed a choreographed path controlled from one central system. The Spaxels went on to fly in London in 2013, in Dubai in 2014 and at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015.

A home built quadcopter with its battery, wiring and four motors in plain view. Photo: SKsiddhartthan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The drone counts rose fast once big companies got involved. In 2015 Intel and Ars Electronica flew Drone100, a show with 100 LED drones. Intel's Shooting Star drones appeared in the Super Bowl LI halftime show in 2017, and at the opening of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in 2018 a display of 1,218 drones set a world record. After that the records moved to China. A show in Zhuhai flew 3,051 drones in 2020, and in 2024 a display in Shenzhen flew 10,197 drones from a single computer system. Many shows use RTK satellite positioning to place each drone to within centimetres.

Spectators watch 500 drones by Geoscan Drone Show form a Sputnik satellite to mark 60 years since the first human spaceflight, April 2021. Photo: Geoscan Group / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Record nights and where ABB robots come in

This autumn alone brought several big shows. On 9 September 2026, two days before the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, 2,977 lights rose over New York Harbor and formed the Twin Towers at full scale, one light for each person killed. The tribute was developed with 9/11 survivors, family members and first responders. In early September the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado also had a drone show, and the Sheboygan County Fair in Wisconsin booked one for its 175th anniversary.

Crowds on the waterfront watch a New Year's Eve drone show over the harbour in Funchal, Madeira, 2025. Photo: Dr. Thomas Liptak / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Between 27 and 30 September 2026, Sky Elements Drone Shows and Damoda America flew a series of shows in Blue Ridge, Texas, with about 10,200 drones each, and Guinness World Records confirmed two records. One was 71,207 drones launched in a week, beating the old mark of 55,939. The other was a dragon made of 10,183 drones, beating the mythical-creature record of 2,247. Damoda's drones travel in box-like trays that also charge them, and each drone takes off from its box and lands back in the same one.

Drones draw a stag over the Danube beside the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest, August 2024. Photo: Envagyokabela / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not fly light shows, but building and handling drones in these numbers looks a lot like work its robots already do. A show of 10,000 drones means 10,000 frames to assemble, motors to screw down and LEDs to test. ABB's dual-arm YuMi IRB 14000 was built for small-part assembly next to people, and ABB uses it in its own screwdriving cell. We found no ABB project at a drone show company, so this is a possible fit. Our post on drone manufacturing looks at robots on drone lines in more detail.

ABB's dual-arm YuMi IRB 14000, a robot built for small part assembly, working beside a lab technician. Photo: ABB

Where drone light shows are heading

Robots have their own history of performing to a script. ABB's YuMi conducted the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra with Andrea Bocelli in Pisa in 2017, repeating gestures recorded from the conductor Andrea Colombini, much as a show drone replays a path set in advance. Shows like these are also replacing fireworks in some places: some US cities have switched to drone or laser shows to cut fire risk and air pollution and to spare dogs and people with PTSD the noise. Our post on robot performers covers more stage robots.

ABB's YuMi conducts the Lucca Philharmonic with Andrea Bocelli in Pisa, 2017. Photo: ABB

Each show also comes with a lot of handling. Thousands of drones have to be unpacked, charged, checked and packed again, sometimes several times in one night, as happened at the Texas record shows. Damoda's charging trays already save some of that work. Loading trays, swapping batteries and packing drones into cases are repetitive pick-and-place tasks of the kind ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker does on packaging lines, and a cell like that would usually be planned first in RobotStudio. We know of no such project yet, so treat it as an idea.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items into cases at high speed. Photo: ABB

Safety is the biggest open problem. At the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, a glitch sent 350 of 500 drones into the water before a match. In Orlando in December 2024, missing flight path data caused collisions among 500 drones, and one falling drone hit a seven-year-old boy, who needed open-heart surgery. Drone shows also cannot fly in rain or strong wind, and the first of the September record shows in Texas ran just before a major thunderstorm arrived. As shows get bigger, operators will need better fail-safes and clearer airspace rules.

A homecoming drone show seen from a crowded riverside park in Milwaukee, September 2025. Photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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