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Trailblazing 5G festival hosted in the UK

The delivery of seamless low latency audio/visual workflow enabling artists to work together remotely over a 5G network, as well as the ability to broadcast live performances in any immersive audio format, are two huge cultural and commercial step-changes for the industry which we intend to develop further as a legacy of this project.

Gavin Newman
Brand Director at Metropolis Studios

The award-winning 5G Festival saw 20 musicians play together seamlessly, despite being in venues many miles apart, providing a glimpse of the massive potential of 5G technology.

The artists performed from three of the UK’s most iconic music venues – Metropolis Studios, the O2 Blueroom at The O2 and Brighton Dome – with technicians bringing them all together with the use of 5G.

The 5G Festival let nine organisations, led by Digital Catapult, explore how 5G and immersive tech could play a key role in the future of live events as part of the wider £200 million DCMS 5G Testbeds & Trials Programme.

5G Festival was a unique R&D trial that used the power of 5G and other technologies to communicate the “live-ness” of an experience wherever audiences or musicians are.

Since early 2020, the partners behind 5G Festival have experimented with understanding how collaborations and performances across multiple venues in different geographical locations can transform the work of artists and producers around the world, as well as creating innovative and memorable live experiences for audiences in-venue and at home.

The March 2022 showcase provided a clear demonstration of the potential future use cases for 5G in the music and live arts sector, as well as the commercial benefits of using 5G as part of a range of connectivity solutions for this type of event, and how other advanced technologies like virtual and augmented reality can be seamlessly combined to produce novel experiences for performers and audiences alike.


5G Festival was twice recognised by UK5G as the ‘Most innovative use of 5G Technology’ in 2021 and 2022 and has been shortlisted for the prestigious TPI Live Production of the Year award

At the showcase, nine artists collaborated over the 5G Festival Common Service Platform, with 20 cameras and more than 20 artists collaborating over 200 audio channels