Auditoria Delivers Stadium Audio Design for the FIFA Arab Cup 2025 Opening Ceremony
Auditoria has returned to one of Qatar’s most distinctive sporting venues, Al Bayt Stadium, to deliver the full stadium audio system design for the FIFA Arab Cup 2025 Opening Ceremony, produced by Katara Studios.
The opening ceremony took place on the 1st of December 2025, marking the start of the tournament ahead of the final on the 18th of December. More than 60,000 spectators filled the stadium in Al Khor for a visually ambitious performance built around themes of unity, renewal and cultural continuity.
This project marked Auditoria’s second major deployment in the venue, following earlier work on the FIFA World Cup 2022 Opening Ceremony. While the creative brief was entirely new, the team arrived with an understanding of the stadium’s unique architectural and structural limitations.
Unlike conventional stadiums, Al Bayt’s roof is formed from fabric, designed to evoke a traditional Bedouin tent. While visually striking, this conceals all roof steelwork, meaning no new rigging points can be introduced. As a result, the stadium’s existing house system had to be fully removed and replaced, with all new arrays flown from the original hanging locations and within the original weight loadings.
“The venue comes with a few technical constraints,” explains Scott Willsallen, Sound Designer at Auditoria. “We had a fixed number of hanging points, fixed weight capacities, and a very short timeline. The key was using those limits creatively rather than fighting them.”
Auditoria designed a system using L-Acoustics K2 throughout both the upper and lower seating bowls. Additional subwoofer arrays were introduced to extend low-frequency performance, creating a more even full-range experience across the stadium.
With rehearsals largely restricted to off-site locations in order to protect the playing surface, on-field access was limited. To maximise accuracy, the system was fully modelled using Soundvision and EASE, with live measurement points in the stadium used to calibrate predictions against real-world behaviour.
“The rehearsal window was tight, but that didn’t limit our ability to refine the system,” says Willsallen. “Because everything was flown and installed early, we could tune and optimise outside of rehearsal time. That gave us the headroom we needed to really focus on intelligibility and musical clarity.”
Narration played a central role in the 20-minute ceremony, which told a symbolic story through music and choreography. This made speech intelligibility just as critical as musical impact.
The system was tuned to deliver clear spoken word across all 60,000 seats while preserving depth and energy in the musical score. Katara Studios supplied fully prepared music stems, allowing the team to mix dynamically on site.
“For a stadium of this scale, it sounded remarkably controlled,” adds Willsallen.
“The narration was clean, the music carried real weight, and the broadcast feed translated beautifully. The system gave the composers and director exactly what they needed to tell the story.”
Following the opening ceremony, the audio system remained in place to support fixtures throughout the tournament.
Auditoria worked closely with the Katara Studios production and technical teams, including Executive Producer and Head of Production Mahmoud Hamaky, Executive Creative Director Ahmed Al Baker, Technical Director Adrian Burke, and Systems Technical Manager Greg Kershaw.
“None of the restrictions became obstacles,” Willsallen reflects. “Everyone involved understands this environment inside out. That shared experience makes a huge difference and is what contributed to making this a very positive project from start to finish.”
