Panasonic’s 3-Chip DLP projectors are providing the 4K immersive visuals for the Cercle Odyssey world tour, which is playing to over 150,000 spectators during 30 shows across 15 dates, in Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Paris, between April and June 2025. The show is inspired by Homer’s epic Greek poem Odyssey.
Cercle Odyssey is the brainchild of Cercle, a multidisciplinary artistic movement that creates concerts and immersive experiences to showcase renowned artists in unique locations, including UNESCO world heritage sites. Designed and directed by Derek Barbolla, founder and artistic director of Cercle, the show fuses the creativity of famous musicians – including Moby and Empire of the Sun – and visual artists.
To bring the ambitious, large-scale immersive experience to life in each concert, Cercle Odyssey is utilising 2,300sqm of projection space across the walls and ceiling of each venue.
Immersive event production specialists, ETC Onlyview, are installing 20 Panasonic PT-RQ50K 50,000lm 3-Chip DLP4K laser projectors, equipped with Panasonic’s wide-angle, short-throw ET-D3QW200 lens for projecting 360° visuals onto the walls.
Two RQ50Ks are stacked together in each panel and rear projected, surrounding up to 5,000 spectators per concert with 100,000lm of brightness and stunning visuals. The RQ50K delivers 4K resolution (4096 x 2160), offering cinematic image quality. Cercle Odyssey will also use six compact PT-RQ35K projectors, offering 30,000lm of brightness, which are discreetly positioned by the stage to project 4K images onto the ceiling.
Derek Barbolla said: “Cercle Odyssey’s partnership with Panasonic showcases our shared ambitions: to push technological boundaries and reinvent immersive experiences that emotionally resonate with, and unite audiences – whilst making them as accessible as possible to global audiences. The 360° projections delivered by Panasonic – synchronised with live music – enables spectators to experience live entertainment and visual storytelling like never before.”
Sustainability has been placed at the forefront of Cercle Odyssey, with the entire tour designed to minimise its overall carbon footprint. All sound, lighting, and projection equipment is locally sourced. By choosing projectors instead of traditional LED screens, energy consumption is significantly reduced, especially for the large projection areas utilised in each concert.
Hartmut Kulessa, head of marketing visual systems at Panasonic Connect Europe, added: “We believe images have the power to connect and move people. As Cercle Odyssey’s technical partner for video projection, Panasonic is pioneering new frontiers in immersive storytelling. Our industry-leading 4K projectors bring these moments to life, enabling audiences to engage with the future of large-scale, sustainable events, today.”
