{"id":703510,"date":"2026-05-30T03:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/703510\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T03:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:43:11","slug":"remaining-vivid-sydney-drone-shows-cancelled-following-crashes-into-harbour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/703510\/","title":{"rendered":"Remaining Vivid Sydney drone shows cancelled following crashes into harbour"},"content":{"rendered":"

All remaining Vivid Sydney drone shows have been cancelled following a technical failure at Monday night’s show, where almost 90 drones fell from the sky.<\/p>\n

Drone shows were scheduled for most nights throughout the festival, which runs until June 13, but Vivid Sydney said these would now be replaced with firework displays from Sunday.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the festival organiser said the cancellation was guided by “technical and regulatory assessments” carried out by SkyMagic, the drone show operator.<\/p>\n

“Providing certainty for visitors, residents and event attendees as Vivid Sydney continues over the coming weeks has also been an important consideration in making this decision,” Vivid Sydney said.<\/p>\n

“Public safety will always remain the highest priority.”<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

At Monday night’s 7:30pm “Star-Bound” show, 1,000 drones ascended into the sky, but 83 fell into Sydney Harbour<\/a> and six others landed on the ground and on a bridge around Cockle Bay.<\/p>\n

The festival said efforts were underway to retrieve the drones.<\/p>\n

In a statement, SkyMagic said it was working closely with authorities to identify what external interference<\/a> caused some of the drones to fall from the sky during Monday night’s show.<\/p>\n

“On this basis, the decision has been made that the drone performances will not return for the remainder of Vivid Sydney 2026,” it said.<\/p>\n

The company had previously said spectators were not at risk when the drones fell.<\/p>\n

\"Colourful<\/p>\n

Drone shows were planned for almost every night until the end of the festival. (Supplied: Destination NSW)<\/p>\n

It suspected an “unforeseen change in the radio frequency” was to blame for the failure.<\/p>\n

“This anomaly caused a number of drones in the fleet to enact failsafe landing procedures in response to compromised positional accuracy,” the earlier statement read.<\/p>\n

“No vehicle escaped the safety boundary of the show parameters and the reaction of the pilots and crew were timely and appropriate in accordance with our operations manual and processes.”<\/p>\n

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has launched an investigation into the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All remaining Vivid Sydney drone shows have been cancelled following a technical failure at Monday night’s show, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,342459,338671,338678,342456,342458,342453,342455,44,339555,342457,143124,342452,295664,338672,338680,336038,342454],"class_list":["post-703510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cockle-bay","tag-drone-show","tag-drones-fall","tag-drones-fall-from-the-sky","tag-fireworks-to-replace-drone-show","tag-is-the-vivid-drone-show-cancelled","tag-malfunction","tag-news","tag-skymagic","tag-star-bound","tag-sydney-harbour","tag-sydney-vivid","tag-technical-difficulties","tag-vivid-drone-show","tag-vivid-drone-show-cancelled","tag-vivid-festival","tag-why-is-the-vivid-sydney-drone-show-cancelled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}