On a chilly night in January, Ajay Sreekumar stood outside Dubai’s Museum of the Future and craned his head up to the sky. He watched a swarm of 600 drones whirl some 400 feet above in the dark, humming as they formed an LED-illuminated portrait of the city’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Over the next nine minutes, the drones transitioned seamlessly between multicolored and animated 3D images, including a spinning globe and a scientist inspecting the DNA double helix.
Sreekumar was not only a spectator — he was also the spectacle’s lead designer. The drone show was part of the closing ceremony for the World Health Expo Dubai, and the company Sreekumar worked for, Skyvertise, had organized it. When the show concluded and the last drone touched down, Sreekumar felt a glow of satisfaction. His team had spent the previous two days designing, programming, and rehearsing the show, and it had gone off without a hitch, he told Rest of World.
Part of the thrill was seeing his work as a 3D artist come to life immediately. “You don’t have to wait months to see the product,” as with his former job in film and TV, he said. “Your portfolio can be seen in the sky in real time.”
Two years ago, Sreekumar was working at an Abu Dhabi media studio when he came across a job listing for Skyvertise. He had no experience with drones, but his 3D design skills were transferable. He soon found himself doing everything from operating the drones to changing the batteries to designing the show animations.
The United Arab Emirates was an early adopter of drone technology, and drone shows took off in 2020, during the pandemic. Five years later, drone shows are a staple of large events like conferences, festivals, and public celebrations like New Year’s Eve. For the 2024 Dubai World Cup for horse racing, a show by AO Drones featured 4,450 drones that combined light displays with fireworks.
There is no official employment data on the sector, but Sreekumar is one of the many workers who have been pulled away from jobs in media and gaming. Their new jobs come with high-pressure deadlines, especially during the winter months between November and March — peak season for the festivals and celebrations in the UAE that put on drone shows. The industry’s seasonal nature means the pay is uneven.
“People are motivated to work overtime and weekends because it’s their only opportunity to get their actual expected salary,” Kris Vloemans, former general manager at Dronisos Middle East, a drone show company, told Rest of World.
The first reported drone show took place in 2012, as part of a music festival in Austria. Advances in GPS and battery technology in the mid-2010s made drones more common in aerial displays. Now, a typical fleet consists of LED-equipped quadcopter drones weighing half a kilogram (around 1 pound) or less, which are choreographed by software. The LED drones can be synchronized with pyrotechnics, lasers, or music in a performance lasting up to 20 minutes, before their batteries have to be changed or recharged. By 2020, a fleet of 1,800 drones was part of the opening ceremony at the Tokyo Summer Olympics.
In 2023, the global drone-show market was valued at $339 million, with the Middle East accounting for about $41 million. While North America is the largest market, the shows in the Middle East are more spectacular and use more drones, according to a report by SPH Engineering, a drone tech company. An average show in the region costs about $112,250 and has 401 drones. That’s far more expensive than a traditional fireworks show, which can range from $13,600 to $41,000. Drones, however, are reusable and more eco-friendly.
Daria Bakhtigozina, a 3D artist for Dubai-based drone company Lumasky, saw a drone show for the first time online in 2022, which got her dreaming about working in the industry, she told Rest of World. It was “magic,” she said.
The 24-year-old believes her academic training in aircraft flight control systems helps. “It gives me a better idea of how something I create on a program is connected to a real, physical process,” she said.
Bakhtigozina finds her job exciting. But as the work in the UAE is mostly seasonal, projects slow between April and October. During peak season, drone companies put on multiple shows a week, and demand quick turnarounds for designs. The process of designing a show usually takes one to two weeks, said Sreekumar, but during peak season it can be just three to four days, and sometimes faster.
A new aspect of the job is the use of artificial intelligence. AI is already changing the production process in drone show design. Skyvertise has developed an AI model for internal use, and Sreekumar expects it will save him time creating design mock-ups for clients. Muyasar Abulkhair, Skyvertise’s CEO, agreed.
“It gives you more time to create the animation in the sky,” he told Rest of World. Abulkhair envisions a plug-and-play software that companies can purchase to replace in-house designers.
“I will tell my partners: You don’t need to hire designers, here’s the software … leave it to the AI to give you the design,” Abulkhair said.
For now, AI acts as a supplement to human designers. Large and complex shows still require specialized staff. But increased reliance on automation will lead to safety risks, Vloemans said. He foresees operators having less technical experience, increasing the chance of mistakes.
“Automation will lead to overconfidence,” he said. “With automated or off-the-shelf systems, you don’t necessarily need a full understanding of the system. And that frightens me a bit in the sense that you are entirely relying on the system and not skilled workers anymore.”
Even one fault can prove disastrous. At recent drone shows in South Carolina, China, and Vietnam, dozens or hundreds of drones abruptly dropped out of the sky and plummeted to the ground. Last December, at a drone show in Orlando, a falling drone hit a 7-year-old boy in the chest and injured him so badly that he required emergency heart surgery.
Growing concern about the lack of universal safety standards for drone shows spurred the creation of the International Drone Show Industry Association earlier this year. The UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority also has strict regulations that require pilot accreditation and registration for each drone.
Demand for pilots once outpaced supply in the UAE, but the trend has now reversed, as a commercial drone pilot certification can be obtained with training in just three days.
“The main part of the job is safety,” Edvinas Kuznecovas, a pilot licensed in multiple countries, who has experience operating drone shows in the UAE and elsewhere, told Rest of World. Being a drone pilot requires expertise beyond flying, he said.
Still, pilot salaries in the Middle East are lower than in the U.S. or Europe, Kuznecovas said. Entry-level drone pilots earn around 5,000 dirhams ($1,361) per month; experienced operators make about 8,000–10,000 dirhams ($2,178–$2,723).
But drone pilots are finding opportunities beyond light shows. The market for unmanned aerial vehicles in the UAE has seen a 76% increase in registered pilots, a 53% growth in firms, and a 75% surge since 2023 in commercial drone activities. The oil and gas, construction, and real estate industries are among those considering UAVs for mapping, surveying, and inspection.
The industry’s future will depend on balancing automation with human expertise. Drone shows will still rely on ground crews to set up equipment and charge stations, change batteries, and carry out other on-site maintenance. Human creativity, too, will persist amid the technological advances, Bakhtigozina said.
“Humans were creating from the beginning, are creating, and will create one way or another,” she said.
