© TOBIAS BROECKING
RELOAD FESTIVAL DATES 13–15 August 2026 LOCATION Sulingen, Lower Saxony, Germany
LED plates. With 12 individually controllable strobe segments and 48 plate segments, the fixture offers a wide range of effects, from powerful strobe bursts to subtle colour changes and broad washes. At Reload, Bröcking made use of this versatility, combining punchy strobe effects with wider illumination to enhance the overall stage design. “I can have the fixture hanging in the roof in its largest mode, and a guest lighting designer still patches only the smallest fixture if that suits their show better,” says Bröcking. Existing programming does not have to subordinate itself to the festival set-up. The set-up adapts to the production instead. Reload returns from 12 to 14 August 2027, with Electric Callboy and Heaven Shall Burn confirmed as headliners so far.
aunched in 2006 and originally held in Twistringen, Reload Festival moved to Sulingen in 2011. With Judas Priest,
as though they had crossed a desert. But we didn’t have a single failure.” The festival design has come from Christie Lites for many years, with Bröcking developing the set-up and handling coordination with the bands. Having worked on Reload since 2019, he knows precisely what a design of this kind has to achieve. It must give the mainstage its own particular visual frame, while remaining open enough for changing productions to fold it into their own shows without detours. “The JDC Burst 1s were distributed evenly across the back of the rig,” he says. “They served as classic strobes, and at the same time, the LED plate let us give the set a visual finish along the top.” The JDC Burst 1 combines a segmented white strobe line with two large-area RGBW
In Flames and Arch Enemy headlining the bill at this year’s event, the German festival staged its largest edition to date, drawing a record 20,000 visitors to a festival pitched between metal, hardcore and punk. Christie Lites was responsible for lighting, video, rigging equipment and the preprogramming studio on the Impericon Mainstage, under project manager Michael Casper. On the Impericon Mainstage, 24 GLP JDC Burst 1 and eight MAD MAXX fixtures formed part of the festival design. “There was a 15-metre-high dome of dust standing over the festival,” recalls designer Toto Bröcking. “The fixtures looked afterwards
OUT OF DARKNESS Christie Lites provided lighting, video and rigging for the main stage at this
year’s Reload
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