Polygon Live is set to launch a new three-day festival in London, touted as the “world’s most immersive 360° live music experience”.

Following editions at Thailand’s Wonderfruit Festival and stints in Singapore and Saudi Arabia, immersive live event production firm Polygon Live is set to deliver a three-day festival in London’s Crystal Palace Park from 2-4 May.

“The event in London will be the biggest outdoor spatial audio event the UK has ever seen, and that applies all over the world. As far as we’re aware, no one’s really doing this in outdoor environments because it’s such a difficult-to-control space,” says Cassidy Parker, Polygon communications lead.

The new venture aims to deliver a fully immersive experience for attendees, with speakers positioned overhead and around the corresponding hemispherical stages. For a market as big as London, the team aspired to scale up their offerings with a bespoke event.

“We’re limited to a certain size because of the physics of sound delay, and therefore the only way for us to scale this is by doing multiple circles,” explains CEO Nico Elliott.

“London is a market where we need to have more capacity, and that’s kind of the reason why we’re doing two domes in London. We’ll be doing some really interesting synchronized lighting, so we’re hoping to have an exciting light show to go with the performances, with the light show being an art piece itself.”

“There’s no doubt that spatial audio is gaining momentum”

Between the two stages, roughly 100 speakers will immerse audiences in waves of live music, with each stage boasting “five times the speakers a stage of similar size would use,” the firm reported in its December announcement.

Performers for the inaugural London festival will include Arooj Aftab, Gold Panda, Halina Rice, Jon Hopkins, Nitin Sawhney, Photay and Tinariwen, along with a raft of names to be announced.

Despite historically centring on electronic music, the team says they want to open up to new genres and live instrumentation.

“We started programming a variety of different genres, and it’s a really interesting and different way to appreciate what you’ve historically always listened to in this area, format, with vocals and musical instruments coming from all around you,” Elliott says.

Though sound and sight are the two primary innovations of the domed stage design, the firm is also developing haptic and scent experiences to correspond with the music.

“When people are craving immersive events in different ways, they’re looking for the emotional response that an immersive event often offers. It’s not just about something cool to see or experience, it’s how it makes you feel and how it makes you feel connected to people around you, which is why we’re so excited about taking spatial audio away from headphones and making it something that you can connect with as part of a community of people around you,” she says.

“We’re very keen to take that further and take it to bigger audiences and more people in the years to come”

“There’s no doubt that spatial audio is gaining momentum. Stereo has had an almost 100-year history, and it’s kind of an unquestioning acceptance that this is how we listen to music.

“To be able to say there is an entirely different way of experiencing music and it does immerse your body and makes you part of the people around you, and you can feel it is a very rich and rewarding experience. So we’re very keen to take that further and take it to bigger audiences and more people in the years to come,” explains Parker.

Though the founders — Elliott, Adam Nicholas and Archie Keswick — were initially based in Hong Kong and Myanmar, the company’s recent relocation to London has opened up new markets of opportunities, both inside the UK and beyond.

Directly following the London festival, Polygon will deliver a three-dome iteration to Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in its largest version yet: “The dual-dome design is only being launched in May, and a month later, we’re pushing on a little bit further,” Parker says.

The Infinity Stage will reside in the main festival area, known as Centeroo, alongside five pre-existing stages and will boast its own programming. Bonnaroo’s 2025 edition will be headlined by Luke Combs; Dom Dolla; Tyler, The Creator, John Summit; Glass Animals; Olivia Rodrigo; Avril Lavigne; Justice; Hozier; Vampire Weekend; and Queens of the Stone Age.

With international momentum, Elliott says the team is looking to bring the experiences to new markets, potentially in a more permanent format.

“One thing that we are exploring and hoping to bring is some kind of a more permanent immersive installation. It’s a growing area, and we hope to bring our own version of an immersive installation focused around the audio, but with some of our other kind of immersive technologies also in there,” he says.

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Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival has unveiled an Infinity Stage for its 2025 edition, touted as the “world’s largest” 360° live music experience.

Backed by UK-based music technology company Polygon Live, the new venture aims to deliver a fully immersive experience for attendees with speakers positioned overhead and around the hemispherical stage.

“Our offering, however, is not just about sound. It’s designed to tap into almost every sense: sound, sight, scent and touch. It’s a multisensory environment that stimulates and amazes, and keeps our audiences coming back for more,” explains Polygon.

Featuring “spatialised sound and synchronised lights,” the structure will be erected alongside five pre-existing stages – three main and two tents – in the main festival area, known as Centeroo.

Dedicated programming is expected for the stage, with a lineup announcement expected this week.

Infinity Live is reportedly a North American first, with Polygon Live staging iterations across Asia

The four-day pop/rock festival, which welcomed 70,000 people last year, is set to return to Manchester, Tennessee for its 22nd edition from 12-15 June. Bonnaroo is produced by Superfly Presents, which also produces San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival, and AC Entertainment.

Infinity Live is reportedly a North American first, with Polygon Live having staged iterations at Thailand’s Wonderfruit Festival and Singapore’s AFTER 2049, an electronic music event held before the country’s Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Polygon Live will also launch a bespoke three-day festival in London this May, dubbed the UK’s “largest outdoor spatial audio festival”.

Polygon Live LDN will be the first event to utilise Polygon Productions’ dual-dome design, with each stage boasting “five times the speakers a stage of similar size would use”, said Polygon during its December announcement.

The inaugural edition is set for 2-4 May 2025 at Crystal Palace Park and will include performances by Arooj Aftab, Gold Panda, Halina Rice, and Jon Hopkins.

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Polygon, a UK-based start-up which claims to have invented “the world’s first fully immersive 3D 360° sound stage”, will officially launch Polygon Live at Wonderfruit festival in Thailand next month.

Designed around an L-Acoustics processor, the Polygon Live arena “changes the status quo” by giving performers – who are first flown to Polygon’s London office to ‘pre-spatialise’ their music – “the ability to perfectly spatialise sounds within, but also to physically move sounds around, a space”, putting the fan at the centre of immersive surround-sound experience.

Christian Heil, CEO and founder of L-Acoustics, says: “Sound is by definition a spatialised medium. It’s how the human species naturally experiences sound: detailed, multidimensional and localised. Today at concerts we should instead be asking, ‘Why is the sound not spatialised?’ Until recently, the answer to this question was because we didn’t have a user-friendly and cost-effective ecosystem to reproduce natural, 3D sound.”

“Polygon and Wonderfruit have showcased L-ISA technology since 2017 and can be considered pioneers in the use of spatialised sound in the electronic and dance music world,” Heil adds. “EDM is a thrilling application for L-ISA because the genre does not tie the physical localisation of sound to a known and recognisable instrument such as a violin or a drum kit. This opens up tremendous freedom to have sound travel, shapeshift and ricochet, independently of where the sound is made.

“Today at concerts we should instead be asking, ‘Why is the sound not spatialised?’”

“L-ISA becomes a kind of instrument, enveloping fans in entirely new sensations and perceptions. It’s exciting and Polygon is at the forefront of a sonic and creative revolution that is only just beginning to unfold.”

Polygon CEO Nico Elliott adds: “After many years researching 3D sound we are excited to officially launch Polygon Live. We believe that Polygon will redefine how live music is experienced and set a new benchmark for the industry.”

At Wonderfruit this year, Polygon Live will take the form of a bamboo stage designed by lighting designer/architect Visual Systems, also featuring scent dispersion, pyrotechnics and tubed LED lighting.

The Polygon Live line-up at Wonderfruit includes leading electronic musicians and DJs including Be Svendsen, Luis Rosenberg, Viken Arman Alban Endlos, Martha Van Straaten and Matanza.

Wonderfruit 2019 takes place from 12 to 16 December at Siam Country Club in Pattaya, Chonburi.

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