# How many drones does a drone show need? – Drone Stories > How many drones a drone show needs: 100 for a room, 200 for a wedding, 600 for a festival, 1,000 for a city, 1,500 for two million people. Source: https://dronestories.com/magazine/how-many-drones-for-a-drone-show/ Stories # How many drones does a drone show need? A drone show needs between 100 and 1,000+ drones. 200 drones tell a story to a wedding or a few thousand people; 600 fill the sky over a festival of 150,000; 1,000 carry a city-scale event like Central Park or Burning Man; 1,500 opened Shakira's concert for two million people. Viewing distance and the story decide, not the budget alone. In short We are Drone Stories. We flew the first independently orchestrated drone performance (Franchise Freedom, with Studio DRIFT) and have since flown 1,000 drones over Central Park, 15 shows at Burning Man and the F1 drivers in Las Vegas. Most shows fall between 100 and 1,000+ drones. [Get a proposal](/proposal/)[What a show costs](/drone-show-cost/) ## 100 drones: a room, a courtyard, a close audience Indoors or in a small space, 100 drones are a lot. [Social Sacrifice](/drone-shows/social-sacrifice-venice/), the first indoor drone performance, flew 100 drones in the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice. At that distance every drone reads as a single point of light and the audience sees the detail of the choreography. Shapes and text are limited; movement and atmosphere are not. ## 200 drones: weddings, birthdays, launches 200 drones is where storytelling starts. It is enough for a figure, a name, a date, a simple animation, and it fits a private audience of 150 to a few thousand. We flew 200 for [a wedding](/drone-shows/a-wedding-with-old-and-new-memories/), for a [birthday in Montenegro](/drone-shows/happy-birthday/) with 150 guests, for [the Van Gogh Museum's 50th anniversary](/drone-shows/van-gogh-museum-50-years/) and for [Samsung's foldable phone launch](/drone-shows/samsungs-foldable-phone-launch/). Franchise Freedom, the performance that started it all, flies with 200 to 600. ## 400 drones: a city square, a brand moment With 400 drones the picture gets sharper and the show can be seen from further away. [Franchise Freedom at Art Basel Miami](/drone-shows/franchise-freedom-art-basel-miami/) flew 400 for 15,000 people on the beach; the [Formula 1 Las Vegas launch](/drone-shows/formula-1-las-vegas-launch-drone-show/) flew 400 over the Strip. ## 600 drones: festivals and city celebrations 600 is our most common number for a crowd of tens of thousands. It gives legible logos, text, characters and transitions at the distance of a festival field. [EDC Las Vegas](/drone-shows/edc-las-vegas/) (150,000+ people), [ACL Festival](/drone-shows/austin-city-limits-acl-festival/), [Amsterdam's New Year's Eve](/drone-shows/amsterdam-new-years-eve/), [Spotify at ADE](/drone-shows/spotify-x-ade-2022/), [Tesla's Cyber Rodeo](/drone-shows/tesla-cyber-rodeo-giga-texas/) and [LUMA Arles](/drone-shows/luma-arles-starry-night/) all flew 600. ## 1,000 drones: a skyline At 1,000 drones the show becomes part of the city. [Central Park](/drone-shows/franchise-freedom-in-new-york-central-park/), [Burning Man](/drone-shows/burning-man/) (80,000 people in the desert), [Mercedes-AMG F1 in Las Vegas](/drone-shows/mercedes-amg-f1-las-vegas/) and the [Las Vegas Grand Prix](/drone-shows/f1-las-vegas-gp-2023/) flew 1,000. The canvas is wide enough for a full narrative with several scenes, and the show is visible from kilometres away. [Cannes](/drone-shows/cannes-drone-show-2024/) flew 1,400 over the bay. ## 1,500 and more: one show for a whole city For two million people on Copacabana beach, [1,500 drones opened Shakira's concert](/drone-shows/shakira-copacabana/). For [Desert Swarm at Noor Riyadh](/drone-shows/desert-swarm-noor-riyadh/), 3,000 drones moved as one swarm over the desert. At this scale the question is no longer how many drones, but how much airspace and how many take-off fields the site allows. ## So how many do you need? Start from the audience, not the number. Up to a few hundred guests who stand close: 100–200. A brand event or a square with a few thousand people: 200–400. A festival or a city crowd of tens of thousands: 600–1,000. A beach or a skyline with hundreds of thousands: 1,000 and up. The number of drones is also the first factor in [what a drone show costs](/drone-show-cost/), together with show length, location and animation. [Tell us the site, the date and the audience](/proposal/) and we come back within a day with the number we would fly, and why. ## Related shows [All shows](/drone-shows/) [### FORMULA 1 LAS VEGAS GRAND PRIX Formula 1 · Las Vegas - USA · 1,000 drones](/drone-shows/f1-las-vegas-gp-2023/)[### Shakira at Copacabana Shakira · Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro · 1,500 drones](/drone-shows/shakira-copacabana/)[### Björk at Coachella Björk · Coachella · Indio, California · 864 drones](/drone-shows/coachella-drone-show/) Let’s collaborate ## Tell us your story. We’ll put it in the sky. Brief us on the event, the place and the audience. Within a day you’ll hear whether a drone show is the right call, roughly what it takes, and what we would do with it. [Get a proposal](/proposal/)[Talk to a human](/contact/)