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FIFA 2026 World Cup It dominates our stadiums, televisions, news, and social feeds — and now the skies above Seattle, too. For the six football games the city is hosting, Seattle is launching a drone show that includes something not seen in other drone shows: a scoreboard showing that day’s team flags and final scores.
It’s a technical feat that rides an unexpected wave of interest and excitement around the World Cup hosted by Canada, the United States and Mexico – especially since the United States is usually more associated with (American) soccer than with (American) soccer. soccer. While cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Houston compete for attention (and international tourists), Seattle’s answer is to create a spectacle in the sky that visitors and locals alike can enjoy.
I wanted to know more about how a show like this could get off the ground with hundreds of drones, so I headed to a cordoned-off grass field at Seattle Center, a complex originally built to host the 1962 World’s Fair where innovations like Cordless phone It has been unveiled.
Drone show with a new twist
When Seattle residents and visitors look up at the sky near the Space Needle, they will see a 12-minute display that includes images of a football, a giant whale tail hitting the ball and icons celebrating the event.
What’s different is the scoreboard that displays the flags of the teams playing that day and the final score, requiring custom changes for each display.
The drone was displayed after the first match between Egypt and Belgium, which ended in a 1-1 draw.
The show runs on the days when games are played in Seattle: June 15, June 19, June 24, June 26, July 1 and July 6. Each drone show happens as soon as it gets dark, which is pretty late this time of year in Seattle: 10 p.m. or later.
The show is a brainchild Visit Seattlea private, non-profit organization that markets the benefits and attractions of the Emerald City. Jorge Guttuso, Visit Seattle’s World Cup activation officer, explained the appeal of the scoreboard idea. “Being able to put on a show like this for people who can’t attend the game, I think that was one of the big goals for us, but also to showcase Seattle on the big stage,” he said.
A coordinated aerial dance with 400 drones
To make the scoreboard idea a reality, Visit Seattle turned to its Texas headquarters Heaven elements To build and execute a show using 400 drones. Unlike a consumer drone you might fly in your backyard, the quadcopters used here are specifically designed for drone shows and only include flight mechanics and a massive 10,000-lumen light, which is roughly equivalent to a car headlight.
Drones line up in preparation for the show.
They also have sophisticated GPS systems that can keep them within a centimeter of where they are supposed to be in the air, said Preston Ward, chief pilot and general counsel for Sky Elements. In the sky, they work about six feet apart.
Although 400 drones is a lot, this is nothing compared to the company’s larger offerings. One over at San Diego Comic-Con for the movie Deadpool vs Wolverine In 2024, it broke the then world record with 2,400 drones, 300 of which carried fireworks. The following year, a Netflix show took the spotlight Strange things With the participation of 5,000 drones. Ward said the large display could include 10,000 drones.
“Almost everything we do is a custom show, from start to finish, and we rarely reuse formation,” Ward said, meaning each show ends up being a “one-time custom event.”
Although each display has a single pilot, they do not direct the quadcopters using a set of joysticks. Everything in the drone display is pre-designed in software. He estimated that Sky Elements animators spent 80 to 100 hours creating the full presentation, with each drone’s flight path and light color animated by hand.
“Everything is pre-programmed, so it’s planned in advance, and once we get started, we can’t change those plans that are going to happen,” Ward said.
The drones undergo light checks to ensure they are ready for nighttime display in the sky.
But including the score of that day’s match adds a new variable: Sky Elements have to wait for the final score and then incorporate it into the sequence. For most games, this isn’t a problem: on the day of my visit, they had about eight hours between the end of the game and the show to receive updated flight data and upload it to the drones.
It may be even more difficult on June 26 when the Iran-Egypt match kicks off at 8pm PT, leaving much less time between the final whistle and that evening’s show. Kyle Pivnik, vice president of Sky Elements, said his team will be on hand to watch the game so they can update the animation and send it to the pilot in Seattle “as soon as it’s safe, compliant and ready.” It is scheduled to start at 10:45 p.m
Display setting
All this pre-production makes the scene on the ground early on look very quiet. When I arrived a few hours before that night’s show, the drones were stacked six high on folding tables while Sky Elements crew members waited for word to begin setting up. It takes six to eight hours to set everything up, and about two hours to clean up at the end of the night.
Drones stacked on folding tables waiting to be set up for a drone show in Seattle.
The display is powered by just two laptops, one primary and one backup, connected via Ethernet cable to wireless base stations that communicate with the helicopters via Wi-Fi. A Starlink mini Provides Internet access to the setup.
One of the laptops leading the evening drone show.
“It’s enterprise-grade networking equipment, so we could probably run a small office building from what we have here,” Ward said. “It’s very unique, and we’re exaggerating it, (but) we want to make sure that all of these communications will be reliable on the ground and in the air.”
While there was still daylight to work, the crew carried the stacks of drones into the field. Under the supervision of Sky Elements pilot Cole Thompson, who ran the show, the drones were placed in a 10 x 40 grid.
A Sky Elements employee positions a drone in position during preparation for that night’s drone show.
After some troubleshooting and testing, the field is ready and waiting for final render files to be sent from the animators in Texas. When those elements arrived, they were uploaded to the drones via the local Wi-Fi network set up by Sky Elements.
Drones line the grass near the Seattle Space Needle.
“Once we start the show, everything is locked in, from the placement to the colors,” Ward said. When the sky finally darkened enough, the show began with an expansive roar of 1,600 fans, set off in four tiers that slid east to hover over an enclosed stadium (for safety). The drones displayed a multi-colored layer of waves and a giant whale’s tail that slowly bent down to slap a soccer ball.
A giant whale’s tail hits a soccer ball at the start of the 2026 World Cup drone parade over Seattle.
The drones then invisibly reorganized themselves to reveal the flags of that day’s national teams, Egypt and Belgium, with the score tied at 1-1 beneath them. Since the drones move freely in 3D space, the flags appeared to be waving in the air. The show concluded with a shimmering Seattle skyline, the Seattle Games logo featuring the Space Needle on the soccer field and the words “Let’s Go SEA 26” and finally “See You Soon” in large print.
The flags and words were repeated in reverse, so that people watching from the north could also read the messages.
Four more shows are scheduled to take place during the World Cup in the city: June 24, June 26, July 1 and July 6. Each show is scheduled to start at 10pm PT, with the exception of the June 26 show, which will kick off at 10:45pm.
“We wanted to create something that had never been done before, a once-in-a-lifetime show that would highlight this opportunity to millions of people abroad (and) also to the thousands of people who come here for the World Cup,” Guttuso said.
