Just days into this year’s Vivid Sydney celebrations, the festival’s huge drone spectacular has already been grounded after a technical malfunction reportedly sent several drones dropping into Sydney Harbour.
The festival’s Star-Bound drone show was abruptly cancelled during Monday night’s 7.30pm session after attendees noticed drones appearing to fall from the sky mid-performance, with clips and reactions quickly spreading across social media.
Massive drone show failure at Vivid caused hundreds of drones to crash into Cockle Bay.
— Daniel (@VoteLewko) May 26, 2026
Video by Hugo Northam. pic.twitter.com/9IzhDKbjjl
An anonymous Sydneysider who works in the Darling Harbour area told the ABC he saw the drones “crashing” into the marina wharf, causing some commotion.
“Everything seemed normal and then very shortly after that first image was displayed, on the southern side of Cockle Bay you started seeing drones dropping in the water and then from there it was a cascading failure of the drones,” he claimed.
“The sound of them crashing on the wharf was considerable even from probably 10 to 15 or 20 metres away; you could hear them physically crash and smash onto the cement marina.
“They did look like they were well and truly outside their flying zones. They’re not meant to fly over anyone or even close to anyone and it fell within metres of people I was with.”
He also alleged “it sent people running near where I was”, adding that it was “remarkable no-one was hurt”.
According to organisers, the later 9.30pm show was also scrapped, alongside all scheduled performances for today and tomorrow while officials conduct what they described as a “full technical and safety review”.
“Monday’s 7.30pm Vivid Sydney ‘Star-Bound’ drone show was cancelled due to unforeseen technical difficulties at the start of the performance. We apologise for the disappointment and inconvenience caused to attendees. The specialist operators identified a technical issue and made the decision to safely discontinue the show in line with standard safety protocols,” Vivid shared in a statement.
“Public safety is always the number one priority and a full assessment is now underway with the specialist operators and relevant government agencies advising on next steps,” it continued.
“A decision was swiftly taken to cancel the 9.30pm performance to allow further assessment. As a precaution, the drone shows scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday have been cancelled to allow time for a full assessment. To our knowledge no drones landed outside the designated exclusion zone.”
SkyMagic also issued a statement on the matter, writing that due to a “technical issue”, 89 drones fell from the sky.
“The root cause of the issue was an unforeseen change in the radio frequency (RF) environment occurring after take-off. This anomaly caused a number of drones in the fleet to enact failsafe landing procedures in response to compromised positional accuracy,” the statement read.
“The pilot team encountering the issue immediately performed a stop command rendering the fleet stationary in the air, enabling time to safely assess the issue. Once stability had been evaluated, the team then activated the return to home protocol bringing the unaffected drones to a safe landing.
“The condition that was experienced was momentary meaning that not all vehicles were affected however the system failsafes are very fast to react to an environmental problem meaning that some failsafe triggers occurred.”
The company insisted that “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. Some vehicles during the emergency landing phase encountered the geofence goundary and shut down to preserve the safety zone resulting in them falling into the water.”
The drones at @VividSydney were dive bombing into Darling Harbour, tonight.
— Taraustralis (@Taraustralis) May 25, 2026
No, it wasn’t on purpose. pic.twitter.com/VSqSMgSzQX
Appearing on 702 ABC Sydney, Head of Destination NSW Karen Jones said the radio frequency interference issue at hand was not “deliberate”.
“That was one thing that we did absolutely turn our mind to as we’re going through the initial assessment last night … there was no deliberate interference,” she said.
Jones insisted no members of the public were within the exclusion zone at the time of the incident, so there was no risk to public safety.
“All our safety protocols worked last night,” she said.
“There are of course workers involved with the production of SkyMagic, as well as any other sort of safety workers [in the exclusion zone].
“I’m pleased to report that there’s been no reported injuries as a result of last night.”
The annual Sydney festival officially kicked off over the weekend, once again transforming the city with massive light displays, live music, food pop-ups and immersive experiences across the harbour.
This year also marked the return of the festival’s drone component after it was pulled from last year’s program over safety concerns — despite becoming one of the most talked-about attractions in 2024. Some festival-goers had also previously criticised the show for not quite living up to the hype.
Weather has already complicated things this year too, with Sunday night’s first 7.30pm drone session cancelled because of rain. However, the later 9.30pm performance reportedly ran without issue.
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