England – Robe lighting enjoyed a brilliant PLASA London 2026 expo, adding to the great energy and excellent vibes of this long-running expo for showcasing the latest innovations from the world of entertainment and leisure technology.
Robe launched five new products – underlining the manufacturer’s commitment to PLASA London as a creative and commercial hub and meeting place for the industry – and debuted a new expo live performance ‘experience’.
Robe also won commendations from the PLASA Innovation Award judges for its GLINT and AERIS technologies as featured in the new GigaPointe luminaire.
Furthermore, the team relished the great vibes on the Avolites stand as they picked out their Golden Console winner, the culmination of an 8 month campaign based around celebrating the brand’s landmark 50th anniversary.
Launched products
Arianne 4 and Arianne 12
Two new Arianne LED wash light products – Arianne 4 and Arianne 12 – now join the Arianne 6 and Arianne 2, offering a complete family of fixtures, delivering strong, high-quality output, excellent colour mixing, great animation effects and reliable performance, all in a compact, fully sealed, weatherised housing to reduce maintenance time.
Central to the Arianne fixture range is an RGBL LED lightsource – complete with lime chip that really makes colours pop with bright, high-clarity output and smooth colour mixing, including a range of authentic CT whites. A smooth zoom enables the multifunctionality of producing tight beams to broad washes, and individual LED ring control enables creation of beautifully organic kinetic effects, additional movement and visual interest.
The Arianne family is a highly practical choice for all professional lighting applications that needs less cleaning and maintenance, facilitating quicker turnarounds.
LEDBeam 400
LEDBeam 400 retains all the features and functionality that have made the LEDBeam series so universally popular, complete with a significantly more powerful LED engine, while remaining compact and highly portable.
Twelve 55W RGBLime multichips deliver an impressive 43.000 lux at 5 metres from this compact 11 kg light that draws just 550W of power, offering outstanding output efficiency, vibrant colours, and excellent illumination. This is all packaged into the legendary small LEDBeam series footprint.
iT10 Profile
This is a space-saving version of Robe’s larger iT12 Profile, with all the tools, features, options and quality of light expected, including accurate, repeatable, high‑impact static profile performance.
This luminaire is IP65‑protected and engineered for real-world use, and therefore perfect for demanding environments. Its advanced, self‑managing, low‑maintenance ingress protection ensures consistent, stable performance in all scenarios – theatre, broadcast, concert and theme park applications – indoors or outdoors, whatever the weather.
Robe’s ground-breaking patented TRANSFERABLE ENGINE technology extends the fixture’s life, enabling easy in-the-field exchanges and future-proof LED upgrades.
mySVOPATT
This unique fixture is a moving version of Robe’s static SVOPATT, designed to be a striking scenic centrepiece and a powerhouse of visual effects.
The Pan and Tilt head has nine precision modules – each containing 7× 40W RGBW multichips – plus a central 200W white LED strobe, so mySVOPATT produces serious output of over 75.000 lumens (integrating sphere).
Versatile control is possible with numerous modes and protocols, including ArtNet and sACN for easy pixel mapping and network integration; RGB or CMY colour mixing; adjustable CCT from 2.700K to 8.000K; an onboard DataSwatch colour library with 66 preset colours; and tungsten lamp emulation for creating authentic, classic lighting effects and retro ambiences.
New live performance experience – Beyond reflection
Devised by Robe’s in-house creative team led by Nathan Wan and Andy Webb, “A World Beyond Reflection – Where Light Reveals All” is another show-stopping Robe live expo concept.
It takes a completely new direction in the mission to demonstrate Robe’s latest technologies memorably and in a real show-driven context, featuring a 10-minute high-octane performance by immersive LED rave experience, Flash Bang Brass.
Their lineup of drums, brass, vocals and tracks certainly got the party started!
Around 250 new Robe lighting products from multiple product lines were used to light the spectacle that ran every two hours of the expo. This included the full Arianne range – Arianne 2s, 4s, 6s and 12s; the just-launched LEDBeam 400s, iT10 Profiles and mySVOPATTS, plus the new GigaPointes, as well as iPAINTE LTMs, iESPRITE LTLs, iFORTE LTXs, WTF!s, LEDBeam 200s, SVB1s, iBOLTs and FOOTSIE2 MC RGBWs, plus a RoboSpot remote follow spotting system.
Supporting the lights in the show were 9 live musicians from Flash Bang Brass, who are currently blazing the rave scene with their infectious blend of club, electronic and pop beats.
This fast-paced show is a departure from previous dance-orientated live expo pieces produced by Robe, bringing a ballsy, abstract ebullience, full of colour and mood, as well as a playground for ‘negative spaces’, together with some great music!
The band and their instruments’ wearable LEDs were also timecoded into the show, which was programmed on an Avolites D9 console.
The show programming used 15 consecutive timelines with over 1,000 live recorded cues featuring 800 different effects, and over 2500 cues were programmed into the console across a 2-hour cycle, which included the VOG presentations.
The D9 handled 55 x DMX universes, utilising two TNPs (Titan Network Processors) and an Ai Q3 pro media server. The D9 – via its multiple screens – provided real-time views of all content output, including a live feed from the RoboSpot camera during the show.
Robe’s new Arianne family was the main focus of the action, together with the super-bright GigaPointe. The show maximised the Arianne series’ ‘limetastic’ colour mixing, massive output and simplified LED ring control and the intensity and dynamics of the GigaPointes.
A back wall of SVB1s further illustrated the potential of beams and twinkling eye candy looks, a few Tetra2s brought a touch of old skool illuminative inspiration, and the incredible power and possibilities of Robe’s workhorse iPAINTE, iESPRITE and iFORTE ranges were also prominent, together with the potency of the iBOLT!
The creative team also devised a special soundtrack and created video content for the high-impact performance, which made plenty of noise and drew lots of attention to the booth throughout the expo.
A KINETIC LIGHTS mirror disc with winch was used at the start of the show, communicating with an Arianne 12 on a new Wahlberg lift platform coming up from the stage floor, which set the narrative for the piece, based on an AI-dominated world, where lights and musicians had to battle to retake control of human imagination.
The band pumped up the bass and the brass played through a KV2 audio system.
Innovation Award commendation
Robe was delighted to be commended by the PLASA Innovation Award for itsGLINT and AERIS features, as utilised in the new GigaPointe laser source fixture.
GLINT (GigaPointe Light Intensity Technology) delivers outstanding intensity, sharpness, flat field, contrast, and vivid gobo projection at any optical setting. Advanced optical elements and software algorithms optimise beam definition and performance, ensuring crisp, high-impact visuals. The Patented GLINT system also maintains safe, consistent Laser Phosphor incoherent light, protecting audiences and equipment.
AERIS (Airborne Emission Removal In-head System) technology instantly filters and scrubs air in the moving light head compartment, preventing airborne residues (like oil and other volatile organic compounds) from settling on optical elements such as lenses, prisms, gobos, and dichroic filters. AERIS keeps the surfaces pristine, extending service intervals and significantly reducing service and maintenance costs.
The judges – all industry professionals and practitioners – commented that by paying careful attention to the detrimental impact of potential contaminants within a head of a moving light, “Robe has developed multiple mechanisms to maintain a cleaner internal environment within a fixture, thereby potentially reducing maintenance intervals and costs as well as prolonging the optimum performance.”
The judges highlighted that AERIS, alongside previous innovations, will be adopted across Robe product ranges contributing to even more long-term reliability.
Avolites 50th Anniversary – Golden console
British lighting control manufacturer Avolites – now ‘A Robe Business’ – is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and on the Monday at PLASA, announced Peyre Emmanuel as the winner of its 50th Anniversary Golden Console competition!
His name was drawn from a tombola live on the show floor by Josef Valchar, CEO of Robe lighting.
The competition, which ran from 1st February to 31st August 2026 as part of Avolites’ Avo50 celebrations, offered entrants worldwide the chance to win a totally unique anniversary console – an exclusive 24-carat gold-plated D3-010 – the only one in existence!
854 in total entered the competition, registering via the Avolites Competition Portal and collecting Golden Tokens by completing a range of Avolites activities over the seven months. These ranged from attending official Avo50 events and completing in-person or online Avolites Academy training, to taking part in monthly hidden challenges and SoMe posting using the #Avo50 hashtag.
The top 50 entrants on the Golden Token leaderboard were entered into the final selection from which Peyre’s name was picked. Congratulations!!!!
Photo © Marko Polasek
