A New Creation for the Fête du Lac

On August 1, 2026, Albigny Bay will once again become the stage for one of Europe’s largest pyrotechnic shows. Following “Ode to the Moon” in 2025, the City of Annecy has once again entrusted ARTEVENTIA with the artistic direction and production of the Fête du Lac.

For this new edition, Édouard Grégoire and the Bureau des Créations have conceived “The Soul of the World,” a 70-minute show in which music does not merely accompany the images: it becomes the true narrator of the story.

Through nine acts, the show offers a sensitive journey through eras, cultures, and human emotions. Classical music, orchestral works, film soundtracks, contemporary creations, and popular songs respond to one another to compose a universal fresco.

From the project’s inception, the ambition was clear: not to juxtapose disciplines, but to build a single artistic language capable of inhabiting the entire landscape. “In Annecy, we don’t just work with the sky. The lake, the mountains, the reflections, and the distances are all part of the show. The challenge is to make the technology disappear behind a single experience,” explains Édouard Grégoire, Artistic Director of ARTEVENTIA.

Music as a Universal Language

The soundtrack brings together 34 works, from John Miles to Hans Zimmer, from Karl Jenkins to Jean-Michel Jarre, including Frank Sinatra, Indochine, Dalida, Juliette Armanet, ODESZA, and M83.

Each piece opens a new visual universe. The colors, effect heights, movements on the water, and light evolutions are written in close relationship with the music. The whole forms a continuous composition in which each discipline contributes to the dramatic progression.

Actress Maïk Darah, notably known as the French voice of Whoopi Goldberg, accompanies this journey. Her voice connects the different tableaux and invites spectators to explore the memories, dreams, celebrations, and emotions that shape our relationship with the world.

This prominence given to the music also demands a specific focus on rhythm. Over 70 minutes, the intensity can never be constant. One must accept moments of pause, manage contrasts, and allow certain images to settle before they disappear. “If everything is spectacular all the time, then nothing truly is. You have to know how to build silences, expectations, and breaks to give meaning to the most powerful moments,” continues Édouard Grégoire.

The Lake Transformed into a Monumental Stage

For “The Soul of the World,” Albigny Bay is entirely transformed into an open-air stage.

More than 2.2 tons of fireworks are distributed across 104 platforms installed on the lake. The show comprises 10,858 firing cues, synchronized with the soundtrack, aquatic effects, and light movements.

The scenography extends from water level to the sky. Fifty-five water jets, reaching up to 30 meters in height, create liquid architectures before the audience. Forty-four lighting points sculpt the space while eighteen sound diffusion points envelop the bay.

Above the lake, 60 pyrotechnic drones extend the writing of fire. Carrying their effects directly into the sky, they create new trajectories, suspended cascades, and aerial apparitions impossible to achieve from traditional firing positions.

Their integration follows the same logic as the rest of the show: not to create an autonomous “drone sequence,” but to weave them into the overall composition. Their movement, altitude, and temporality offer a vocabulary distinct from that of traditional pyrotechnics, and it is precisely this contrast that enriches the artistic language.

The Grande Dame and the Pyrotechnic Bicycles

Among the emblematic elements of this edition is the “Grande Dame,” an eight-meter-tall female silhouette installed on a floating structure.

Evoking an opera singer and serving as a symbolic embodiment of music, she moves across the lake and appears to guide the show. Her presence introduces a scenographic and almost theatrical dimension into this space usually devoted to fire, water, and light.

Eight aquatic and pyrotechnic bicycles also traverse the lake’s surface. Their movements bring motion to the foreground of the show and create an unprecedented dialogue between performers, water, and pyrotechnic effects.

These new devices make it possible to occupy all dimensions of the bay: the lake’s surface, floating structures, fountains, the sky, and surrounding terrain become the different layers of a single composition.

“It is often these unexpected elements that give a show its personality. A simple, well-integrated idea can evoke as much emotion as a technically impressive setup,” emphasizes Édouard Grégoire. This search for balance between innovation, poetry, and clarity runs through the entire creation.

A Large-Scale Collective Creation

Behind the 70 minutes of show lie several months of design, thousands of hours of preparation, and a significant human and technical operation.

Artistic direction is provided by Édouard Grégoire, with Gabriel Legrand as technical director and Julien Delaveau overseeing the project. ARTEVENTIA brings together the teams of GB4D, Aquatique Show, Câbles et Cie, Magic Drone, and Cardinali Group for this creation.

Each partner contributes their expertise to bring together pyrotechnics, floating machinery, aquatic effects, light, sound, and aerial technologies in a perfectly synchronized production.

The production requires several weeks of assembly and disassembly on the lake. At the event scale, nearly 2,000 people are mobilized on the day of the performance to welcome the public, ensure security, and enable the smooth running of the evening.

This collective dimension is essential. A multidisciplinary show can only work if the various areas of expertise are conceived early enough as components of the same project. “Creation is not a stacking of departments intervening one after the other. Technique, light, water, drones, music, and scenography must be able to dialogue from the very first design stages,” explains Édouard Grégoire.

A Tradition Born on the Waters of the Lake

The Fête du Lac has its origins in the grand Venetian festival organized in 1860 to celebrate the visit of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, following the annexation of Savoy to France.

Since then, this tradition has evolved by incorporating the various transformations of pyrotechnic art, light, and live performance. Each edition gives birth to an original work specially designed for Lake Annecy and its exceptional environment.

With “The Soul of the World,” ARTEVENTIA continues this history while renewing the language of the Fête du Lac. The show no longer relies solely on the power of fire, but on the convergence of several disciplines united in service of a single narrative.

Between lake and mountains, pyrotechnics and technology, voice and music, this creation transforms the Annecy landscape for 70 minutes into a monumental stage dedicated to collective emotion.

And perhaps therein lies the true challenge of this edition: to make the audience forget, for the duration of the show, the scale of the technical means deployed, leaving them with only one impression—that of a world coming to life before their eyes.

Photo credits: Julien Batard, Frédéric Lepla, and Arthur Lepla