What is the biggest drone show company?

The biggest: Sky Elements

Our partners at Sky Elements fly every kind of show at every scale, and they are the best in the world at it. No company flies more drone shows. They have the fleets, the crews and the experience to fly night after night, city after city. We work with them on many projects, and we are proud to call them friends.

The pioneers: Drone Stories

We founded this industry. Drone Stories came out of Studio DRIFT: in 2008 Ralph Nauta came up with the idea of a flock of birds made of light, and in 2016 Ralph and Lucas van Oostrum started Drone Stories to make it a reality. In 2017 Franchise Freedom flew at Art Basel Miami: the first 3D drone show, and the first driven by artificial intelligence, built on the real swarming behaviour of starlings. The few drone shows before it drew flat clip art in the sky. Everything that came after started there.

Since then we have flown the shows that people still talk about: 1,000 drones over Central Park, Copacabana in front of two million people, Formula 1 in Las Vegas with the drivers on track, Coachella with Björk, Burning Man, 1,400 drones over the bay of Cannes and the first indoor drone performance, in Venice. For Desert Swarm at Noor Riyadh, 3,000 drones moved as one swarm over the desert.

Pioneering means going where nobody has flown. No drone had ever been allowed above New York City; we worked five years to change the law, and together with Mayor Eric Adams we made it happen. We flew the first drone show at Burning Man, and the first in Capri, Venice, El Salvador, at Kennedy Space Center, in Cannes, at EDC, at Coachella and in Hong Kong for Louis Vuitton. What those places share: it had never been done there, and the locations were hard.

Not niche: every kind of event

Spectacular does not mean only for the few. We fly for brands, festivals, cities and weddings and private events, from 100 drones over a garden to thousands over a city. Our shows start at $50,000; most land between $100,000 and $200,000. What every show has in common is a story: we are storytellers who use drones, not a drone company that does stories.

Biggest and boldest, often together

The two companies are not rivals. They answer different questions. If your event needs the reach of the biggest operator in the world, Sky Elements is the right call, and we will tell you so. If it needs a show that has never been flown before, a story that has to land in front of the world, that is what we do. And on many projects we fly together: their fleets and crews, our story and design.

How to choose for your event

Size is one question. The others matter more: who gets the airspace approval, whether you see the show before it flies, what happens when the weather turns. Read how to choose a drone show company and what makes the best one. Or tell us the site, the date and the audience: within a day you hear what we would fly, or who we would send you to.