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Nov 06, 2024

'World's largest outdoor LED wall' stars at Adele concerts

By Guy Campos in Displays, Europe, Live Events August 6, 2024 1 Comment The 220 metre wide undulating LED wall is believed to be constructed with ROE Visual panels on a Stufish-designed stage hosted

By Guy Campos in Displays, Europe, Live Events August 6, 2024 1 Comment

The 220 metre wide undulating LED wall is believed to be constructed with ROE Visual panels on a Stufish-designed stage hosted by exhibition organiser Munich Messe.

A giant outdoor LED wall that is said to be the largest in the world has been constructed at a pop-up stadium for a series of 10 concerts by Adele.

The undulating LED wall, initially reported to be 220 metres wide, was installed at the Munich exhibition grounds operated by Munich Messe.

The LED panels in use are believed to be from ROE Visual, supplied by Solotech, with processing by Brompton Technology. Stage design was by Stufish.

The pop-up stadium, which has a capacity of 80,000, is thought to have cost $43m with expected revenue of around €500m (or $545m) from the concert series.

In a profile of Adele's pop-up stadium at Fast Company, Live Nation Germany head Marek Lieberberg, compared the stage to the Coliseum and said the use of a pop-up stadium was an experiment for the concert promoter.

Around 80% of concertgoers were expected to arrive by rail, and transit passes have been included with concert tickets, addressing sustainability concerns and limited parking at the venue.

Among those attending the first night was ISE managing director Mike Blackman. Writing on LinkedIn he said the concert, with what is thought to be the world's largest outdoor LED wall, a circular catwalk that brought Adele closer to the audience, and a light and fireworks show finale, was an example of what ISE was about.

Drone footage of the show by Munich drone operator Kilian Boedrich has also been widely shared.

AV Magazine comment: Is this the largest outdoor LED wall in the world? With a screen area of up to 4,159.7 sq metres, the temporary LED wall is undoubtedly one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the world, certainly as a traditional LED wall installed as part of the stage design for a concert.

Permanent outdoor installations of innovative, transparent or mesh LED have reached larger sizes.

Most notable is the world's largest LED screen, the Exosphere in Las Vegas - which is strictly speaking an LED sphere and not an LED wall - which has a screen area of approximately 54,000 sq metres.

Also notable is the 89 x 104 metre exterior LED display on the facade of Resorts World in Las Vegas, with an approximate screen area of 9,000 sq metres.

However, the Sphere was constructed with an innovative LED puck design, provided by Saco Technologies, and Resorts World uses LED mesh from Yaham LED, rather than traditional LED.

Update #1 (6 August, 2024) A reader has drawn our attention to the Soundstorm festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which typically features extremely large LED screens, and in 2023 hosted a 189 x 43 metre LED screen with an area of more than 8,100 sq metres.

Soundstorm definitely deserves an honourable mention in any discussion of humongous outdoor LED screens, as the total area of its most recent screen is larger than the LED screen built for Adele in Munich.

But we were told you can't make a direct comparison. Soundstorm festival LED walls tend to have breaks in them and be made of many shaped components, with different types of LED in different positions.

If you are talking about the largest continuous outdoor LED wall, it looks very likely that the Adele concerts in Munich will take the crown.

Update #2 (7 August 2024) Solotech has been named as the supplier of the ‘record-breaking’ Adele LED wall. Munich-based digital signage consultancy invidis has questioned the initial report that the LED wall was 220 x 30 metres in size, suggesting that it was of a lower height.

The consultancy claims that the LED for the project came from the largest single-batch order of LED which was placed with ROE Visual by Solotech.

Update #3 (8 August 2024) A reader on LinkedIn tells us we should pay attention to China where the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in 2022 saw an LED floor display that was approximately 10,500 sq metres. This is a screen that we described at the time as "the world's largest 8K HUD LED display".

This is very impressive, but it could reasonably be argued that LED walls and LED floor displays are separate categories of installation. So Adele's LED display in Munich could still credibly be described as the largest outdoor LED wall in the world.

Also, of note, we are told, is a display, totalling more than 10,000 sq metres of LED, at the Asian Culture Carnival in Beijing in 2019. But this display, while impressive artistically and technically, did not consist of a single screen.

Update #4 (15 August 2024) We have made a number of distinctions so far: between the world's largest LED wall and the world's largest LED screen (the Exosphere), a large LED floor display (the Beijing Olympics), and other enormous non-continuous outdoor LED walls (such as at the Soundstorm festivals and Asian Culture Carnival).

But we also need to distinguish between largest LED wall and largest outdoor LED wall and we have corrected some loose wording in the story above to make this clear.

A reader has written in to point out that the enormous, wraparound 16K x 16K resolution indoor LED screen at the Sphere in Las Vegas is the world's largest LED wall. Opened with a U2 residency, this screen is approximately 73 metres in height and has an area of more than 14,800 sq metres.

Having seen this enormously impressive screen up close, it almost feels as if it belongs in a category of its own. It is not just the highest resolution LED screen in the world, but combines elements of LED wall and LED ceiling due to its vertical and horizontal curvature. But, as a wraparound LED wall, it is still an LED wall and so the biggest in the world.

That leaves the LED wall at Adele's concerts in Munich as a candidate to be the world's largest continuous outdoor LED wall, made with traditional LED.