The history of the global drone show industry, 1986-2026

Every time thousands of points of light rise into the night sky and transform into logos, animals, people, flags, spacecraft, or entire animated stories, audiences see magic. For most viewers, it is a few minutes of wonder, a striking video for social media, and the feeling that the future has already arrived.

Behind that magic, however, stand decades of research and thousands of engineers, scientists, programmers, and entrepreneurs. The modern drone show is the result of progress in robotics, aviation, navigation systems, computer graphics, telecommunications, and computing. It is one of the few industries in which university laboratory research has, in a relatively short time, grown into a global entertainment market worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Today, drone shows are used at the Olympic Games, world championships, national celebrations, music festivals, state ceremonies, and corporate events for some of the world’s largest brands. The number of drones in a single show has already exceeded 30,000, and new records are being set almost every year.

Yet only a few decades ago, the idea that thousands of autonomous drones could perform complex aerial choreography at the same time sounded like science fiction. The history of drone shows began long before the first LEDs appeared in the sky. It began in university laboratories, where researchers were trying to answer a fundamental question: can many autonomous machines act like a single organism?

Chapter 1. The birth of swarm intelligence, 1986-2004

The history of drone shows does not begin with drones. It begins with an idea.

Nature offers a remarkable phenomenon. Flocks of birds can change direction instantly without colliding. Schools of fish move in sync as if they were one living creature. Ants build extraordinarily complex colonies without a single central command. Yet no individual animal has a complete picture of what is happening.

In 1986, MIT professor Rodney Brooks proposed a concept that would later have a major influence on robotics. He suggested that complex collective behavior could emerge without a central control mechanism. Instead of one “main computer,” a system could consist of many independent agents, each following simple rules for interacting with its environment.

This concept would later become known as swarm intelligence. At the time, no one was thinking about drone shows. The research was focused on robotics, artificial intelligence, industrial automation, and autonomous systems. Yet these ideas would later become the mathematical foundation for controlling thousands of unmanned aerial systems in shared airspace.

In the late 1990s, one of the key researchers in this field was Professor Vijay Kumar of the University of Pennsylvania. Under his leadership, the university’s well-known GRASP Lab, short for General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception, became one of the leading centers for this work.

The lab studied collective robotic behavior, autonomous navigation, computer vision, and the control of groups of machines. Researchers were interested in search-and-rescue missions, industrial automation, and military applications. None of them could yet imagine that, within a few years, their work would become the foundation for a new entertainment industry.

Even so, it was at GRASP Lab that the mathematical models began to take shape. Those models would later allow hundreds and then thousands of drones to move in sync, avoid collisions, and perform complex spatial maneuvers. By the early 2000s, the theory already existed. The next step was to teach the machines to fly.

Chapter 2. The first flying robots, 2004-2008

Today, the quadcopter feels like an ordinary device. It can be bought in almost any electronics store. In the early 2000s, however, the situation was completely different. Flying robots were expensive, complex, and highly unstable experimental platforms. Flights lasted only a few minutes. A single gust of air could cause a crash. Most of the computation was performed by computers on the ground.

In 2004, Vijay Kumar’s team demonstrated one of the first truly impressive results. An experimental quadcopter was able to hold its position in space and perform complex maneuvers without constant operator intervention. By today’s standards, this may look modest. At the time, however, flights like this were seen as a serious scientific breakthrough.

Almost at the same time, another story was developing in Germany. Engineers David and Daniel Gurdan founded Ascending Technologies, better known as AscTec. Their main goal was to develop compact and reliable control systems for unmanned aerial vehicles.

In 2005, the company introduced the AscTec Hummingbird, one of the most advanced quadcopters of its time. It could hover steadily, execute autonomous commands, and offered capabilities far ahead of most competitors. AscTec’s most important achievement was not the drones themselves, but the compact autopilots and control algorithms behind them. A decade later, these developments would attract Intel’s attention and play a crucial role in the growth of the global drone show industry.

By the mid-2000s, it had become clear that autonomous flight was no longer science fiction, but a much harder task still lay ahead: teaching not one drone, but several drones, to fly together.

Chapter 3. When drones learned to fly together, 2008-2012

Teaching one drone to fly was a difficult engineering challenge. Getting several drones to behave like a single organism was a challenge on an entirely different level.

Each drone is constantly moving in three-dimensional space. It must account for its own speed, direction, the position of nearby drones, potential interference, and the limitations of the control system. As the number of drones increases, complexity does not grow linearly. It multiplies. The central question facing researchers in the late 2000s was simple: how can several autonomous drones perform a shared task at the same time without colliding with one another?

The answer to that question largely shaped the emergence of the future drone show industry. In 2009, Vijay Kumar’s team at GRASP Lab released a video that is now considered one of the key milestones in the history of swarm robotics. Four quadcopters flew together inside an enclosed space. They moved along precomputed trajectories, changed places, crossed the same airspace, and maintained formation.

Today, a video like this could be produced even by a school robotics club. In 2009, it looked extraordinary. For the first time, a group of flying machines demonstrated coordinated collective behavior. Navigation was handled using a Vicon motion-capture system. Special cameras installed around the room tracked the position of each drone with high precision. That information was sent to a computer, which calculated trajectories and transmitted commands to the drones.

From the perspective of a modern drone show, the system looked primitive. It worked only indoors and required complex infrastructure, but it proved the essential point: the swarm worked.

That same year, interest in these experiments began to grow rapidly. Research groups around the world understood that a new field of robotics was opening up. One of the most influential figures of this period was Professor Raffaello D’Andrea.

Born in Canada, a professor at ETH Zurich, and one of the most compelling public advocates for robotics of his generation, D’Andrea believed that technology should not only solve engineering problems. It should also inspire people. In 2010, at TED Global, his team demonstrated a series of experiments that immediately went viral.

Six autonomous flying machines interacted with one another in real time. They caught and tossed balls, assembled structures from blocks, and performed complex collective actions without direct human control. Millions of people saw, for the first time, that drones could do more than fly, they could appear to think and act together.

Today, that wording may sound exaggerated, but this is how these demonstrations were perceived in the early 2010s. For most people, a drone was associated with a radio-controlled toy. The projects from GRASP Lab and ETH Zurich revealed a very different future. Flying robots could become part of urban environments, industry, logistics, and even art. While scientists explored the possibilities of swarms, their students began thinking about commercial applications.

In 2011, Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger, graduates of Vijay Kumar’s lab, founded KMel Robotics. At first glance, it was a typical university startup. In practice, KMel Robotics became the first bridge between academic robotics and the future drone show industry. The company continued to use Vicon systems and worked primarily indoors. But its goal was no longer scientific publication. It was to create striking public demonstrations of what swarm systems could do.

Among its best-known projects were synchronized drone flights set to music. The drones moved in time with the composition, changed formation, performed complex figures, and effectively created the first elements of aerial choreography.

Today, such performances feel almost familiar. In 2011, they looked like a glimpse of the future. Interestingly, the main clients for these projects were not entertainment companies. Among KMel’s partners was Lockheed Martin, which was interested in collective UAV control technologies for very different purposes. Even so, KMel Robotics’ public demonstrations were among the first to make people seriously consider that a swarm of drones could become a new artistic tool.

At the same time, similar ideas were emerging in Europe among media artists at Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria. The world’s leading digital arts festival had long explored the relationship between technology and creativity. By the early 2010s, its participants were watching the development of swarm robotics closely.

While engineers were solving navigation and collision-avoidance problems, artists were asking a different question. Could a drone swarm become a new visual language? Could artists draw not on a screen, but in the air? Could the sky become a giant digital canvas? The answers would come very soon.

By 2012, all the essential technological elements of the future industry were in place. Compact quadcopters existed. Collective control systems existed. Swarm behavior algorithms existed. High-precision GPS technologies were developing. Electronics and LEDs were rapidly becoming smaller. Only one step remained: to send drones into the sky not for science, military research, or engineering experiments, but for audiences. 2012 would become the birth year of the global drone show industry.

Chapter 4. The birth of aerial art, 2012-2014

By early 2012, all the key technological components already existed. Researchers had learned to control groups of unmanned aerial systems. Navigation systems were becoming more accurate, electronics lighter, and LEDs brighter and more energy efficient. What was missing was someone who would look at a drone swarm not as an engineering problem, but as a new artistic instrument.

At that moment, the history of robotics began to turn into the history of art. 2012 is widely seen as the starting point of the global drone show industry. Before then, there had been scientific demonstrations, laboratory experiments, and isolated research projects. Now, for the first time, public performances were created purely for audiences.

One of the most important events took place in France. The company Drones & Light staged one of the first public drone light shows at the Fête de la Lumière. The venue was the historic Château de La Brède. Nine quadcopters fitted with LED lights rose into the air.

By modern standards, the show would look very modest. Today, nine drones might be used only to test software before a full-scale project. But in 2012, audiences saw something new: not individual flying devices, but an aerial composition made of moving points of light.

The real breakthrough was not the number of drones. It was the approach. For the first time, unmanned aerial systems were used not for filming, surveillance, or research, but as part of a visual performance. Navigation relied on high-precision RTK GPS satellite correction systems, which provided positioning accuracy down to a few centimeters. A central computer controlled all drones simultaneously, synchronizing their movement in space. This was where the concept of the modern drone show began to take shape. In many ways, that concept has barely changed to this day.

Almost simultaneously, similar ideas appeared in Austria. Ars Electronica Futurelab introduced a project called Spaxels. The name would later become legendary in the history of the industry. Spaxels was formed from two English words: space and pixels. The definition was so precise that it effectively described the entire future industry. Each drone becomes a pixel. Hundreds of drones form an image. Thousands of drones create a full-scale aerial stage.

Unlike Drones & Light, the Ars Electronica team approached drones as an artistic medium from the very beginning. They were interested not only in flight control, but in creating a new visual language. If artists had once worked with canvas, screens, or architecture, the sky could now become their medium.

The first Spaxels performances were part of the Klangwolke festival in Linz. They combined music, light, architecture, and synchronized unmanned flight. For many viewers, this was the first encounter with the idea that drones could create not just special effects, but a form of digital art.

Interestingly, neither Drones & Light nor Ars Electronica saw themselves at the time as building a new industry. They considered themselves experimenters. Some called themselves engineers. Others called themselves media artists. The term “drone show operator” did not yet exist.

In 2013, development began to accelerate. Ars Electronica Futurelab actively refined the Spaxels project, staging a series of public performances in Linz and at international digital art festivals. The number of drones gradually increased, and the shows became more complex and expressive.

In the United States, KMel Robotics continued to develop aerial choreography. Using Vicon positioning systems, its engineers created synchronized musical performances involving 10 to 20 drones. Although these shows were still mostly indoors, they demonstrated a new possibility: drones could move to music and become part of a stage performance. This marked an important psychological shift. People were starting to see drones not as machines, but as performers.

At the same time, progress continued in the research community.

In 2014, Vijay Kumar’s team demonstrated new advances in swarm control. Experiments now involved several dozen drones at once. The drones formed complex spatial structures, reconfigured in flight, and carried out collective maneuvers that had seemed impossible only a few years earlier.

For researchers, this was a scientific success. For business, it was proof of scalability. If 20 drones worked today, 100 could work tomorrow. If 100 worked, then one day thousands might work as well. At this point, major corporations began paying attention. Intel was watching particularly closely. The company saw more than beautiful light shows. It saw the future of autonomous systems, the future of swarm intelligence, and the future of computing.

In Germany, Ascending Technologies continued to advance its systems. Its flight controllers were considered among the best in the world, and the company’s solutions were increasingly used in research projects and commercial developments. At the same time, the first teams were forming in China, where the balance of power in the industry would later shift dramatically.

EHang began early experiments with group UAV flights. There were no major records yet, and little global attention. But these were the years in which the foundations of China’s future dominance in the drone show market were being laid. By the end of 2014, it was clear that the technology had moved beyond the experimental stage.

The first commercial projects had appeared. The first specialized teams had emerged. The first clients had arrived. Most importantly, competition had begun. In the years that followed, this competition would become a global race involving Intel, EHang, HighGreat, DAMODA, Dronisos, and dozens of other companies.

That race would take the industry from nine drones above a French château to tens of thousands of drones over the world’s largest cities.

Chapter 5. Intel changes the rules, 2015-2016

Every new technology passes through several stages. First come the scientists. Then the enthusiasts. Then the startups. Then big business arrives. For the drone show industry, that moment came in 2015.

By then, Drones & Light, Ars Electronica, and KMel Robotics had already proven that synchronized drone flight could become a spectacle. But the scale was still measured in dozens of drones. The technology was expensive, complex, and required large specialist teams.

Intel changed the situation.

The corporation had been following the development of autonomous systems closely. Its leadership understood that the future of computing would not be limited to personal computers and servers. The next technological revolution would unfold in robotics, artificial intelligence, and autonomous machines. This is why, in 2015, Intel acquired the German company Ascending Technologies, or AscTec.

At first glance, it looked like another acquisition in the drone market. In reality, Intel was buying much more: a world-class engineering team, flight-control technologies, navigation systems, and many years of experience in autonomous flight systems. This was effectively the beginning of the industrial history of drone shows. Within months, Intel showed that it had entered the market seriously.

On November 3, 2015, an event took place in Stuttgart, Germany, that many industry historians regard as the beginning of the world-record era. One hundred drones took off simultaneously.

Today, that number looks modest. Many modern operators perform shows of this scale every week.

In 2015, however, it was a Guinness World Records achievement. For the first time, people saw a three-digit number of unmanned aerial systems operating as a single system. One hundred drones performed a synchronized program, creating illuminated figures in the sky and demonstrating the potential of a new technology.

The record mattered far beyond the number itself. It proved scalability. If the technology could control 100 drones at once, it could grow further. After this, investors, event organizers, and entertainment industry professionals began to see drone shows as a real market for the first time. Meanwhile, Intel engineers were working on a project that would change the industry even more dramatically.

In November 2015, the company introduced Intel Shooting Star to the world. It was the first specialized drone created specifically for light shows. Before this, most operators used modified general-purpose quadcopters. They were heavy, expensive, and not always suitable for mass launches.

Intel decided to design a show drone from the ground up. Every detail was created for show operations. The drone weighed about 280 grams. Its foam body added an extra layer of safety. Its built-in LED system could display more than four billion color combinations. Flight time was around 20 minutes.

But the main achievement was not the drone itself. It was the swarm-management software platform. Intel developed a system that allowed a single operator to control hundreds of drones at once. For the industry, this was a true breakthrough. Until then, increasing the number of drones meant a proportional increase in project complexity. Now, it became possible to scale shows without dramatically increasing the number of operators.

In 2016, Intel demonstrated the new system in practice. At the opening of a theme park in the United States, the company launched 500 Intel Shooting Star drones into the sky simultaneously. Guinness World Records registered a new world record. In just one year, the industry had moved from 100 to 500 drones. A fivefold leap.

Few entertainment technologies had developed at this pace. What made it especially impressive was that the entire swarm was controlled by one operator using one software system. For audiences, it was a beautiful show; for engineers — proof that the technology had matured; for competitors — a serious challenge. Intel had effectively created a new industry standard.

Yet the most interesting developments were not taking place in the United States or Europe.

While the world discussed Intel’s achievements, China was studying every new show, every record, and every technology closely. EHang was already actively testing its own mass UAV control systems, unlike many Western developers, Chinese engineers were thinking about production scale from the start.

Intel was betting on technological leadership. China was preparing for industrial dominance. At first, the difference was not obvious. Within a few years, it would define the future of the entire industry.

By the end of 2016, it was clear that drone shows were no longer an experiment. There was a global leader and there were Guinness records. There were specialized show drones and the first major budgets. Most importantly, there was a global audience.

Only one thing remained: to show the new technology to the entire world.

Chapter 6. The Super Bowl, the Olympics, and global recognition, 2017-2018

By the beginning of 2017, the technology was ready.

Engineers had proven that hundreds of drones could fly safely at the same time. Intel had created the dedicated Shooting Star platform. The first commercial projects, world records, and major clients had appeared. But the industry still lacked one thing: a global audience.

Drone shows were still a topic for technology conferences, exhibitions, and professional circles. Most people had never seen anything like them. That changed on the evening of February 5, 2017, during Super Bowl LI, the final game of the U.S. National Football League season.

For Americans, the Super Bowl has long been more than a sporting event. It is the country’s biggest television show, attracting more than 100 million viewers in the United States alone and tens of millions more around the world. To appear on the Super Bowl stage is to enter the history of global entertainment.

That was where drone shows first met a mass global audience. During Lady Gaga’s performance, viewers saw an American flag formed in the sky above the stadium by hundreds of points of light. For most people, it looked like a visual effect from a science-fiction film.

In reality, the project involved 300 Intel Shooting Star drones. Although the aerial segment had been pre-recorded for safety and television-production reasons, the impact was enormous. For the first time, the technology moved beyond the engineering community. The world saw a drone show.

Millions of viewers asked themselves the same question: how is this even possible? For Intel, the project was a major marketing success. For the entire industry, it marked the beginning of a new era.

After the Super Bowl, media coverage of drone shows increased dramatically. Event organizers around the world began asking about the technology. Major requests started coming from sports federations, music festivals, and government bodies.

The industry had finally achieved global visibility, but its true historic moment was still ahead. Just one year later, drone shows would appear on the stage of one of the largest events on the planet: the Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, in February 2018.

For Intel, this was a chance to show the world not just a beautiful special effect, but a full technological platform of the future. Preparation for the opening ceremony took many months. Engineers had to solve problems no one had faced at this scale before: low temperatures, high reliability requirements, complex aerial animation, and the simultaneous operation of more than a thousand drones.

On February 9, 2018, billions of viewers around the world saw the result. A total of 1,218 Intel Shooting Star drones rose into the sky at the same time. It was a new Guinness World Records achievement. Never before had so many unmanned aerial systems had performed a synchronized flight in a single show.

Olympic rings appeared in the sky. Then a snowboarder. Then complex animated compositions that seemed to move above the stadium. For audiences, it looked like digital magic. For engineers, it was a triumph of mathematics, programming, and control systems. Each drone weighed about 280 grams and carried an LED system capable of producing more than four billion color combinations. All the drones operated as one organism, executing the program with high precision.

The Olympics became a turning point for the entire industry. After PyeongChang, no one doubted that drone shows were a standalone form of spectacular art. Interestingly, this was also the moment when the geography of the market began to change. Before the Olympics, Intel had been seen as the undisputed leader.

After the Olympics, it became clear that leadership would have to be defended.

In China, an entire ecosystem of drone show manufacturers and operators was already taking shape. EHang, HighGreat, and DAMODA were watching closely and preparing their own advance. While Intel demonstrated technological superiority, China was building production capacity. The difference seemed minor. In reality, it would soon transform the whole industry.

Intel, meanwhile, continued to set records.

In July 2018, the company staged a show in Santa Clara to mark its 50th anniversary. A total of 2,018 drones rose into the sky, the number chosen symbolically to match the year. It became a new world record. For the first time, the number of drones in a show exceeded 2,000.

Even that was not enough. In December 2018, Intel improved its own achievement again. A new holiday show brought 2,066 drones into the air at the same time. Another world record. Another new benchmark for the entire industry. From the outside, it seemed that Intel was becoming the absolute and unreachable market leader. The company had the strongest technology, held the key records, and worked on the world’s largest stages. Intel had taken drone shows global.

But the history of technology rarely develops in a straight line. At the very moment the American corporation was at the peak of its success, China was already preparing the next phase of the industry’s development. That phase would take the world first to 3,000 drones, then to 15,000, and later to records beyond 30,000 drones at once.

Chapter 7. The great shift: how China became the new capital of drone shows, 2018-2022

The history of technology industries reveals a familiar pattern. Very often, one group of companies starts a revolution, while another group scales it. This happened with personal computers. It happened with smartphones. And it happened with drone shows.

By 2018, Intel looked like the clear market leader. It had set all the major world records, created the specialized Shooting Star drone, and appeared at the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games. From the outside, it might have seemed that the winner had already been decided, but inside the industry, changes were taking place that most viewers did not see.

Intel viewed drone shows as a demonstration of technology. Chinese companies viewed them as a standalone business. The distinction was fundamental. For Intel, drone shows were part of a broader strategy to promote computing technologies, autonomous systems, and engineering solutions. The company’s core revenue still came from processors, servers, and data centers.

For Chinese manufacturers, drone shows were becoming a market in their own right. That is why the late 2010s saw the rapid growth of EHang, HighGreat, and DAMODA. If Intel was setting records, China was building infrastructure. New production lines appeared. Specialized platforms were developed. Proprietary swarm-control software systems were created. Operator teams were formed. Most importantly, the domestic market was growing.

National holidays, municipal festivals, tourism events, and large cultural projects created enormous demand for new visual show technologies. As a result, China gained something Europe and the United States did not have: mass practice. Every new event became a testing ground for the next generation of technology. At the same time, the drones themselves became more capable.

Only a few years earlier, most shows had consisted of logos and simple geometric shapes. Now, the sky began to fill with animated scenes: flying dragons, spacecraft, giant flowers, historical figures, and three-dimensional objects rotating and transforming in the air. The industry was gradually moving from demonstrating technology to telling visual stories.

During this period, the Chinese drone show industry developed especially quickly. Alongside EHang, companies such as Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen High Great Innovation Technology Development Co., Ltd. grew rapidly. Chinese manufacturers focused not only on technology, but also on scaling production, software, and operational processes.

On September 20, 2020, Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. staged a 3,051-drone show in Zhuhai. The sky displayed the Earth, a rocket, and other animated figures. The project became a new Guinness World Records achievement and demonstrated China’s growing leadership in the drone show industry.

On March 29, 2021, Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. created a coordinated show for the Genesis brand. A total of 3,281 drones took off simultaneously. The sky displayed the Genesis logo, a car, a hand, and other animated compositions. The new world record confirmed that the center of the industry’s development had decisively shifted to China.

EHang continued to develop in parallel, applying its accumulated expertise in swarm technologies both for drone shows and for its own passenger eVTOL aircraft.

It was during this period that the structure of the market began to change. Dozens of new operators appeared around the world. Drone shows, once a rarity, began to appear at city celebrations, shopping mall openings, music festivals, and corporate events.

The Middle East grew especially quickly. The United Arab Emirates became one of the most active markets for adopting new technologies. Dubai gradually turned into a global testing ground for innovative entertainment formats. Some of the industry’s most interesting projects would later be realized there. Meanwhile, something happened that many experts initially saw as a shock. Intel began gradually exiting the drone show business.

For most viewers, this looked paradoxical. The company that had effectively brought the industry to the global stage was starting to leave the market. From a business perspective, however, the decision made sense. Drone shows had never been Intel’s core source of revenue. They were a demonstration of technological capability, a marketing tool, and an engineering project.

At the same time, the market was becoming increasingly competitive. Dozens of operators could deliver projects faster and more cheaply. Chinese manufacturers offered more affordable equipment. The business model was changing. In effect, Intel had completed its historic mission. It proved to the world that drone shows could become a global phenomenon. After that, the industry began to live its own life.

By early 2022, the industry looked completely different from just five years earlier. The number of drones in record-breaking shows had increased more than thirtyfold. New global leaders had emerged. An international market had formed. Specialized manufacturers of hardware and software had appeared.

But the most interesting developments were still ahead. After solving the challenge of scale, the industry began looking for new directions. One of them was indoor drone shows. This direction would open an entirely new chapter in the history of the industry and lead to projects that were impossible in the traditional outdoor format.

Chapter 8. A new dimension: the rise of indoor drone shows, 2014-2023

While much of the industry was focused on increasing the number of drones in the sky, another direction was developing in parallel. It would eventually form its own market and its own history: the indoor drone show. At first glance, indoor drone shows may seem simpler than outdoor ones. There is no wind, no rain, no airspace approval, and the flights take place in a controlled environment. In practice, the opposite turned out to be true.

Most outdoor shows use GPS or RTK GPS to determine the position of each drone. Inside buildings, satellite navigation is largely unavailable. This means organizers must create their own positioning system. Motion-capture cameras, infrared markers, computer vision systems, ultra-wideband communication, and other local navigation technologies can all be used.

In effect, every indoor project requires its own navigation ecosystem inside the venue. Yet this complexity opened new possibilities. Unlike outdoor shows, where drones are usually far away from the audience, indoor drones can interact with the stage, performers, scenery, and the audience itself. The drone stops being a point of light in the sky and becomes a true performer.

The pioneer of this field was the Swiss company Verity Studios, founded by Raffaello D’Andrea, professor at ETH Zurich and one of the key researchers in autonomous robotic systems.

In 2014, Verity Studios and Cirque du Soleil created Sparked, widely regarded as one of the first artistic works using autonomous indoor drones. Illuminated flying objects became part of a theatrical performance and showed for the first time that unmanned systems could be more than technical devices, but expressive artistic tools.

The next step was even more significant.

On February 15, 2016, at TED2016 in Vancouver, Verity Studios presented the world’s first autonomous indoor drone show above a stage and audience. The performance involved 33 drones. For the indoor segment of the industry, this event played a role similar to Intel’s Olympic show for the outdoor segment later on.

After TED, the company steadily opened new market directions.

In 2016, Verity drones appeared in Cirque du Soleil’s Broadway production Paramour.

In 2017, Verity created the world’s first autonomous drone show on a cruise ship, the Majestic Princess.

That same year, the company created the world’s first permanent indoor drone show in a sports arena, at Madison Square Garden for the New York Knicks.

From 2017 to 2019, 99 Verity drones took part in Metallica’s WorldWired Tour, marking the first large-scale use of an autonomous drone swarm in an international concert tour.

In 2018, the company staged the world’s first autonomous drone show on an ice arena for Royal Caribbean and the first use of a drone swarm in a touring circus, Circus Knie.

By the end of the decade, Verity Studios had effectively shaped all the main commercial directions of the indoor market: theaters, concert tours, sports arenas, circus productions, television shows, and cruise ships.

On October 17, 2019, the company set one of the most important records in the history of indoor drone shows. At London’s SSE Arena Wembley, 160 autonomous Verity Studios drones rose into the air simultaneously under the control of a single computer. The record was officially registered by Guinness World Records.

In the following years, the indoor segment continued to develop actively. On June 24, 2020, Dronisos delivered the San Giovanni Festival project in Italy using 200 indoor drones.

On May 22, 2022, Verity Studios presented one of the largest indoor projects of its time at the opening ceremony of the GCC Games in Kuwait. The production used 232 drones: 56 drones in the first segment of the show and 176 in the second.

By this point, the indoor drone show industry had clearly moved beyond experimentation. It had become an independent market with its own technologies, specialists, and artistic approaches. One of the most notable projects of the next stage took place on February 25, 2023, at Al Maktoum Stadium in Dubai during the opening ceremony of the UAE Super Cup final.

Dronico Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Services LLC staged a theatrical production using 200 specialized indoor drones for the opening ceremony of the UAE Super Cup final at Al Maktoum Stadium in Dubai.

The project told the story of the United Arab Emirates and was fully integrated into the dramatic structure of the opening ceremony. The drones did not simply create images. They became part of the narrative, interacted with the stage environment, and supported the development of the story. The production became one of the most notable examples of indoor drones in sports ceremonies in the early 2020s.

By early 2023, it was clear that the drone show industry had split into two independent directions. Outdoor drone shows continued to compete in fleet size and the scale of aerial images. Indoor drone shows developed toward storytelling, stagecraft, television production, and the integration of technology into live performance.

Both directions used shared technological principles, but solved completely different creative problems. This is why the future history of the industry would develop along two parallel paths.

Chapter 9. The era of mega-swarms: from 15,947 to 33,615 drones, 2025-2026

Throughout the history of the industry, one simple metric has often been used to measure technological progress: the number of drones in the air.

Each new record was more than a striking figure in Guinness World Records. Behind every record were new control algorithms, more reliable communication systems, improved software, lower equipment costs, and the accumulated experience of thousands of flights.

When Intel launched 100 drones in 2015, it seemed like a major achievement. When 1,218 drones flew simultaneously at the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018, many specialists believed the industry was approaching a technological limit. Reality proved otherwise.

By the mid-2020s, China had become the absolute leader of the global industry.

HighGreat, DAMODA, EHang, UFly, Crosstar, and dozens of other manufacturers created an ecosystem with no equivalent anywhere else in the world. If Europe and the United States had been centers of innovation, China became the center of scale. It was here that projects began to appear that would have looked like fantasy only a few years earlier.

The true symbol of this new era was the city of Liuyang in Hunan Province. For much of the world, the name is not widely known. In China, however, Liuyang is considered the world capital of fireworks. It was here, in October 2025, that one of the most impressive records in the history of light shows was set.

HighGreat launched 15,947 drones into the sky at the same time. At that moment, it was the largest drone swarm in history: almost 16,000 drones, 16,000 light sources, 16,000 objects that had to take off, reach their positions, perform the program, and return safely to the ground. Even the basic logistics of a project like this are extraordinary. Preparation required enormous launch sites, thousands of batteries, dozens of operations specialists, and an extremely complex synchronization system.

But the record was important for more than its scale. That same evening, another world record was set. For the first time in history, thousands of drones were used as carriers of pyrotechnic effects. According to official data, around 4,000 drones carried special pyrotechnic charges. A total of 7,679 charges were installed, of which 7,496 fired simultaneously in the air. This was recorded as a new Guinness World Records achievement.

The project became an important milestone for the entire industry. For many years, drone shows had been discussed as a possible alternative to traditional fireworks. In Liuyang, something different happened. Instead of competition, the technologies were combined.

Robotics met pyrotechnics. Digital animation merged with one of the oldest traditions of public celebration. The result was so powerful that many experts described hybrid shows like this as one of the industry’s most important future directions. But even that record did not last long. Only a few months later, China surprised the world again.

February 2026. Hefei. The China Media Group Spring Festival Gala, one of the country’s largest television events. As part of the project, 22,580 drones rose into the air simultaneously. The organizer was EHang in collaboration with partners. The project also involved 16 EHang EH216-S passenger eVTOL aircraft, making it one of the first cases of such a large-scale combination of drone shows and next-generation piloted electric aerial systems.

Guinness World Records registered the achievement as the record for the largest number of multicopters controlled simultaneously from a single computer. This was a new technological threshold. Only a few years earlier, engineers had debated whether controlling 2,000 drones was possible. Now the scale had reached tens of thousands.

But even this record was only an intermediate step.

The real sensation came three months later. May 20, 2026. Dujiangyan, Sichuan Province, China. This was the site of a project that many specialists already describe as one of the most significant events in the entire history of the drone show industry. MOVA Yufengzhe organized a performance involving 33,615 drones simultaneously. A new Guinness World Record.

But that was only the beginning. The same project also registered two additional world achievements. A total of 33,605 drones formed a single aerial image, setting the record for the largest figure created by a UAV swarm. In addition, the project created the largest flying LED mesh screen made of drones, covering 148.3 square meters. For the first time, humanity effectively had a giant digital screen in the sky.

Yet the most important result of the project was not the numbers. The real news was behind the scenes. For the first time, the largest players in the market combined their resources to achieve a shared goal. HighGreat, DAMODA, UFly, and Crosstar, all industry leaders, took part in the project.

Only a few years earlier, these companies had been competing for every contract and every world record. Now they were beginning to collaborate. Most viewers did not notice this. For the professional community, it signaled the beginning of a new era. Thirty-three thousand drones is an impressive record. But cooperation among the leading companies may prove to be much more important. A record shows what is possible today. Cooperation shows what may be possible tomorrow.

If one company can launch 15,000 drones, a consortium of companies can launch 50,000. If several leading operators learn to work as one system, the world may one day see 100,000 drones flying simultaneously. At that point, the main question will no longer be the record. It will be what kinds of stories humanity can tell in the sky with 100,000 flying pixels.

Chapter 10. The future has already begun

When people first saw four quadcopters flying in sync inside the University of Pennsylvania’s lab in 2009, no one imagined that less than 20 years later, a single show would involve more than 33,000 drones. Throughout the industry’s history, each new record has seemed like the limit of what was possible. Four drones. Ten. One hundred. Five hundred. One thousand. Five thousand. Fifteen thousand. Thirty-three thousand. Each time, it seemed that scaling the system any further would be impossible. Each time, engineers proved otherwise.

Today, however, it is becoming clear that the future of the industry is no longer defined only by the number of drones. The main change is happening elsewhere. The role of drone shows is changing. If the first generation of projects demonstrated technological capability, today’s productions increasingly tell stories.

Drones are gradually turning from technical devices into a new visual language. Cinema once became an art form in its own right. Television created its own narrative language. Computer graphics transformed the film industry. Drone shows are beginning to form their own artistic culture.

This is especially visible in recent projects. More and more often, the sky is no longer filled only with logos or figures, but with full narrative compositions: historical reconstructions, national legends, cultural symbols, three-dimensional characters, animated scenes, and aerial performances.

In effect, a new form of mass art is emerging, one that would have been impossible to imagine 20 years ago. At the same time, drone shows are integrating with other technologies. Modern shows rarely exist in isolation. They are combined with laser systems, projection mapping, architectural lighting, fountains, stage lighting, pyrotechnics, and live music. Technologies are beginning to function as a single multimedia organism.

Another important direction is the automation of content creation. In the early days of the industry, every figure was built manually. Every trajectory was calculated by engineers. Every animation element required an enormous amount of time. Today, software is becoming increasingly intelligent.

An operator can upload a 3D model, and the system can automatically distribute thousands of drones in space, calculate trajectories, and minimize collision risk. In the coming years, artificial intelligence may radically change the entire show-preparation process. Just as contemporary designers use neural networks to create images, future show directors may use artificial intelligence to generate aerial productions.

Another direction is the development of eVTOL aircraft, or electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. The participation of 16 EHang EH216-S passenger eVTOL aircraft in the 2026 record show was an important signal for the entire industry. The boundary between drone shows and piloted aerial systems is gradually beginning to blur.

In the future, aerial performances may involve thousands of autonomous drones, passenger air taxis, airships, balloons, and other flying platforms at the same time. Projects like this are no longer fantasy. They are becoming a question of time.

The development of the indoor segment is equally interesting. If outdoor shows continue to grow in quantity, indoor drone shows are growing in quality. More and more projects are being integrated into theater productions, sports ceremonies, and concert programs. Here, thousands of drones are not the point. Precision, narrative structure, and interaction with people matter more.

In the coming years, the industry is likely to split further into two distinct segments: mass outdoor shows and high-tech staged indoor productions. Both will develop in parallel. Both will remain important parts of the industry. It is reasonable to expect that within the next decade, the world will see projects involving 50,000 or even 100,000 drones.

Technologically, this no longer looks impossible, especially if the collaboration among major Chinese companies first demonstrated in Dujiangyan in 2026 becomes a new market norm, but as the history of the industry shows, the number of drones has never been the real goal.

The real goal has always been to astonish the audience. To show something no one has seen before. To tell a story in a new way. To turn technology into emotion.

That is why the true history of drone shows is not a history of records. It is a history of people: scientists who studied swarm intelligence, engineers who created the first autopilots, entrepreneurs who believed in a new industry, artists who saw drones as a new creative instrument, and organizers who took the risk of using an unknown technology on the world’s largest stages. Step by step, they turned a scientific experiment into one of the most spectacular forms of entertainment of the 21st century.

Epilogue

Forty years have passed since Rodney Brooks’ early research appeared in 1986. During that time, the ideas of swarm intelligence have traveled from university laboratories to the world’s largest stadiums. From four drones in the GRASP Lab to 33,615 drones flying simultaneously over China. From a scientific experiment to a global industry.

The history of drone shows is still far from over. Most likely, we are only at the beginning. Every new record, every new technology, and every new show inevitably leads to the next question.

If we can send tens of thousands of drones into the sky today, what will we see tomorrow? As the entire history of the industry shows, the answer is usually far bolder than even the most imaginative forecasts.

CTO & Co-Founder of Dronico, Evgeny Shapoval