Barco brings a citywide panoramic mapping for China’s 15th National Games closing ceremony

On November 21, the 15^th National Games concluded with a grand closing ceremony that blended the excitement of sport with artistic expression. Barco’s projectors played a pivotal role in this event, transforming a liftable stage built over water into a canvas for vivid, large-scale visuals and immersive 3D effects. This innovative projection design helped deliver a truly breathtaking artistic experience for all in attendance.

The closing ceremony marked a milestone in the history of the National Games. For the first time, the event was staged in an open coastal setting, with the sea and sky as a natural backdrop and the city as part of the scenery, making it the world’s first “citywide panoramic closing ceremony”. The “paper stage” was China’s largest and most structurally complex water-based lifting stage to date, representing a pioneering achievement in stage design. Building on the success of the opening ceremony, which Barco also helped bring to life, the closing event showcased Barco’s advanced projection technology in a truly unique setting.

The implementation of this project faced multiple challenges. The setup and rehearsal period coincided with the late-September rainy season, with temperatures exceeding 30°C, resulting in hot and humid conditions. The newly constructed venue offered very limited space for equipment installation, and the complex stage design left only few hours each day for image alignment and fine-tuning.

A total of seventy-eight UDX-4K40 projectors and two Encore3s were used in this project enabling dynamic visuals to be projected seamlessly onto the vertical surfaces of the stage and creating a cohesive, integrated visual effect across the entire waterborne structure. Based on detailed calculations, engineers deployed 54 Barco UDX-4K40 at the front of the stage to illuminate a 40m × 40m projection area with an additional 12 projectors on each side for supplementary lighting.

The UDX-4K40’s laser light source technology and advanced thermal management system ensured continuous and stable performance throughout rehearsals and the live ceremony. The non-contact waterproof design ensured reliable operation in hot, humid, and rainy conditions. Multi-projector stacking  increased brightness, while Encore3 provided comprehensive signal backup and hardware redundancy for uninterrupted visual effects.

The successful execution of this project reaffirmed Barco’s reputation for exceptional image quality and reliability. In recent years, Barco has consistently supported major national events with high-quality visual solutions, safeguarding performances and ceremonies of national-level events and activities.