PLASA Show 2026: live production rigs move onto IP networks
PLASA Show 2026 wrapped at Olympia London this month — three days under one roof for lighting, sound, AV, rigging and staging, running September 6 to 8.
PLASA Show 2026 wrapped at Olympia London this month — three days under one roof for lighting, sound, AV, rigging and staging, running September 6 to 8.
More than 250 exhibitors took stands, and organisers expected over 6,000 trade visitors across the three days — production managers, lighting designers, sound engineers, riggers, all there for the same reason: the hardware and workflow behind making a show look and sound the way it's supposed to.
That an event this size exists purely to serve production crews says something about how specialised the discipline has become. Coverage of the show floor pointed to the same throughline this year: rigs increasingly run over IP networks instead of point-to-point cable, control has moved onto wireless protocols, and the growing connectivity of production systems is turning cybersecurity into a real engineering concern for venues, not an afterthought.
That is exactly the gap on the other side of the industry — every event running without a crew like the ones filling that hall this week, where getting the lights and sound right still comes down to whether you can afford the expertise on display in London.
