2025 FIFA Arab Cup Qatar opening ceremony

The FIFA Arab Cup Qatar 2025 opened on 1 December with a spectacular ceremony at Al Bayt Stadium, in front of 60,000 spectators. Produced by Katara Studios, the 15-minute performance unfolded as a three-chapter narrative that traced the rise, fracture, and rebirth of Arab unity through music, choreography, and large-scale visual storytelling. 

Katara Studios and Stage One engaged Cundall based on our extensive experience in structural design for opening ceremonies and other large-scale global events, including our recent successful collaboration on the 2023 AFC Asian Cup opening ceremony. We delivered the structural engineering design for the aerial flying system used during the ceremony and provided a comprehensive summary of all ceremony-related loads acting on the stadium roof, enabling verification by others of the roof’s capacity to safely support them. 

Danilo Cava, Structural Associate, comments: “It was great to collaborate once again with Katara Studios and Stage One on this fast-moving programme. It necessitated structural solutions which worked within reaction limits delineated by roof engineers from a previous project on the stadium. Expediting the approval process while supporting our clients with the development of the design therefore proved an interesting challenge.”