Christmas drone show: when to book it and what to decide first

Every autumn the same scene plays out in a lot of events departments: the Christmas programme is half closed, someone suggests a Christmas drone show for the lights switch-on, for New Year’s Eve or for the Three Kings parade, and the question that follows is always the same. Are we still in time?

The answer depends less on the show than on the order in which the decisions are made. Of all the pieces in a Christmas programme, this is the one that depends most on things the programmer does not control: a specific site, a specific date, an authorisation tied to both, and the weather on the night. Decide those four in the right order and there is room to manoeuvre. Decide them the other way round and the room disappears on its own.

This is not about price or about how many drones you need; those are covered in other articles. It is about what is specific to these dates: why the calendar fills up earlier, what has to be decided first, what changes in winter and how the flight fits alongside a parade, the midnight countdown or fireworks.

Why the Christmas calendar fills up earlier

The rest of the year, each town’s festivities fall in different weeks and the calendar shares itself out. Not at Christmas. Everyone wants the same four or five nights: the lights switch-on, a weekend or two in December, New Year’s Eve and, in Spain, the evening of 5 January, when the Three Kings parade. Councils, shopping centres, hotels and companies all ask at once, and for the same week. We said as much when going through where and when drone shows are booked in Spain: Christmas is the second big peak of the year.

A drone show cannot be in two places at once. Each one needs its fleet set up on its site and its pilot team on that same night, so the key dates go in order of arrival, and the ones confirmed first are those with a site and a date already settled, not those that have only asked for a price.

There is a second, more administrative reason worth bearing in mind for a Spanish council, whose budget follows the calendar year. December and January fall in different budget years. A show for New Year’s Eve comes out of this year’s budget line; one for the Three Kings parade, out of next year’s. If the idea is to do both, it is worth asking early which line each one is charged to, because it is one of those things that gets discovered late.

What to decide, and in what order

Almost every Christmas project that goes well follows the same sequence. And almost every one that gets complicated started with the design, which is the most appealing part and the least urgent.

1. The night, and the exact time

“At Christmas” is not enough. You need the date and the time, because everything else depends on them. In December it gets dark early, and that helps: a show early in the evening reaches the family audience, with children, without waiting until late. On New Year’s Eve, by contrast, the moment is usually set by midnight. Two different audiences and two different ways of building the programme.

2. The site

The square that looks obvious in December is often the hardest. It is the one with the tree, the lights strung from façade to façade, the market stalls and more people packed together than on any other night of the year. A show needs a take-off area separated from the public and a clear flight space, and sometimes that is in the square and sometimes a few hundred metres away, in a park or an open area with just as good a view.

That is why the site is decided first, and decided with whoever is going to fly. The municipal case is developed on the drone shows for cities and festivities page.

3. The permits

The aviation authorisation is tied to a site and a date. If either changes, that part starts again, and in December there is rarely time to start twice. What gets processed, with whom and why it cannot be improvised is in drone show permits in Spain.

We handle all the permits with the aviation authorities and with the council. Depending on where and how the flight takes place, the file goes to one body or another; that is our job. What stays on the organiser’s side are the event’s own permits (use of public space, road closures, hours), which at Christmas overlap with those for markets, lights and parades. The full split is in who decides and what gets signed.

4. The design

Only now. With site, date and permits under way, the design has the whole autumn ahead of it. And here is a piece of advice that applies especially at Christmas: the star, the tree and the three camels will be seen in many places. What people remember is what could only happen in that sky: the church tower, the town’s coat of arms, the name of the neighbourhood, a figure that says something about the place.

How many figures fit and how many drones they take depends on what you want to tell. We explain it in how many drones does a show take; as a reference, we work from 150 drones up to 7,000.

Winter: cold, wind and nights with no fallback date

Drones fly in winter, and Christmas shows happen every year. But December weather asks for two things that are taken for granted in August.

The first is technical. Cold takes its toll on batteries, and wind on winter nights can exceed the operating limits. The decision to fly is made by the operator on the day, on safety criteria and within the limits of the authorisation. It is not a commercial decision and it is not negotiated that night.

The second is about the calendar, and it is the one most often overlooked. At a summer festival, if one night is unflyable, you move to the next. New Year’s Eve has no next night, and neither does the parade. So the fallback has to be thought through differently: a wider time window that same night, another night in the festive programme for the same show, or what happens if in the end it does not fly. That gets agreed in writing before signing, not on the 31st at ten at night.

With the parade, the countdown or fireworks

At Christmas the show almost never stands alone: it slots into a programme that already has its own rhythm. These are the three combinations that come up most.

The Three Kings parade

The parade moves and runs late; the show does not. It has a fixed site and a specific flight window. That is why it works better at the point where the route ends, as a finale or as a welcome for the Kings, than halfway along, where the audience is spread over several streets and looking at the floats. The parade organisers and the flight team should talk about timings from the start and leave a margin for delays.

The midnight countdown

On New Year’s Eve the time is not negotiable, and that simplifies one decision: whether the show goes before or after midnight. Before, it can act as the countdown and carry the crowd up to the chimes. After, it is the celebration. Both work, but they are not designed the same way, and you need to know which before the design starts, not after.

Fireworks

Many towns have a fireworks tradition at this time of year, and there is no need to give it up. A drone show can be combined with pyrotechnics on the same night, each where it works best. The drones bring the figures, the text and the story; the fireworks, what fireworks do well. When each one suits is compared in drone show vs fireworks, and the most common answer at Christmas is both on the same night, well ordered.

Frequently asked questions

Can the same show be used on New Year’s Eve and for the Three Kings?

The design, yes, and that brings the cost down. The permits, no: each site and each date is its own file. If you want both nights, it is better to plan them together from the start.

Do the Christmas lights get in the way?

They are one of the things checked when studying the site, along with cables, cranes and temporary structures. Sometimes they mean moving the take-off area; rarely do they rule the show out.

What if the council has not approved the budget yet?

Work on the site study and the design can move ahead in the meantime. What is not advisable is waiting until the last moment to confirm date and location, because that is what starts the permitting. General lead times are covered in how much does a drone show cost.

Is it an in-house team or subcontracted?

In our case, in-house. We design, build and fly our own drones, and the team that operates them is ours: we do not subcontract the flight. We have done more than 500 shows, and a good share of the municipal ones get decided exactly like this: with the programme half closed and Christmas just around the corner.

What to have before you call

Four things: the night and the time, the site (or the two or three options on the table), where it sits in the programme —switch-on, parade, countdown— and who has to approve the design. With that we can already say what is possible and on what timescale.

The rest gets solved along the way. Tell us about your Christmas and we will come back with what can be done at that site, on that night and with what margin.