Drone show company · Amsterdam · New York · worldwide
We tell your story in the sky.
We are the drone show company that founded this industry, and we still fly the shows nobody else will: Central Park, Burning Man, Cannes, Copacabana in front of two million people, Formula 1 with the drivers on track. When you book Drone Stories, you book the best storytelling in the sky.
Where we've flown
The impossible, delivered.
A drone show over a city park, a desert, a beach with two million people on it, or a Formula 1 circuit is not a product you order. It is a project we design, permit and fly ourselves, with our own crews. These are some of the places.
Central Park, New York
1,000 drones over Manhattan
Burning Man
Fifteen shows in the desert
Copacabana, Rio
Shakira, 1,500 drones, two million people
Las Vegas
Mercedes-AMG F1, with Hamilton and Russell on track
Cannes Lions
For Kargo, in front of the ad industry
Venice
The first indoor drone performance, at the Biennale
Kennedy Space Center
Apollo 11, fifty years on
Amsterdam
A city’s New Year countdown
Selected work
Shows that landed.
Franchise Freedom in New York Central Park
DRIFT · New York - USA · 1,000 drones
FORMULA 1 LAS VEGAS GRAND PRIX
Formula 1 · Las Vegas - USA · 1,000 drones
Shakira at Copacabana
Shakira · Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro · 1,500 drones
Björk at Coachella
Björk · Coachella · Indio, California · 864 drones
Desert Swarm, Noor Riyadh
Noor Riyadh · Noor Riyadh festival, Riyadh · 3,000 drones
How we work
Storytelling first. Drones second.
01
The story
We start with what you want people to feel, not with how many drones you can afford. A launch, a countdown, a tribute, a headline act: every show gets a narrative arc with a beginning, a turn and an ending people remember.
02
The design
Our designers and animators write that story in light: choreography, timing, music, and the one image the whole crowd will photograph. We prototype in simulation and iterate with you until it lands.
03
The flight
Permits, airspace, safety cases, weather windows, crew: we handle all of it and fly it ourselves. In Central Park, in the desert, on a beach with two million people. That is what you are booking.
Who books us
- Tesla
- Spotify
- Samsung
- Red Bull
- Disney+
- Mercedes-AMG F1
- Formula 1
- Coachella
- EDC
- Noor Riyadh
- LUMA Arles
- Van Gogh Museum
- Kargo
- UNICEF
- City of Amsterdam
We fly as Drone Stories and, for our art performances, as Studio DRIFT. Across 55 published shows and 25,854 drones in the air, for brands, festivals, cities and museums. And a fair number of shows we can’t publish.
Why Drone Stories
The drone show company that started the industry.
Ralph Nauta, Lonneke Gordijn and Lucas van Oostrum founded Drone Stories in 2016; Therme Art and Pace Gallery later joined as founding partners. We flew the first 3D drone show, and since then we have been the first to fly drone shows in Capri, Venice, El Salvador and Cannes, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, at EDC and Coachella, and in Hong Kong.
“When we see a flock of drones perform like a flock of birds, we have those expectations on a beautiful collision course”
Marc Glimcher, president of Pace Gallery, The New York Times
“…the largest public art work to take over Central Park since the installment of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s iconic "The Gates" in 2005”
“That duality—of individualism and community—is what the drones are mimicking to enrapturing effect.”
The first 3D drone show
Franchise Freedom at Art Basel Miami: the first drone show to move in three dimensions, and the first driven by artificial intelligence, built on the swarming of starlings. It won Dezeen’s Lighting Design of the Year.
The first drone show above New York City
No drone had ever been allowed to fly above New York City. We worked five years to change the law and, together with Mayor Eric Adams, flew 1,000 drones over Central Park.
The first drone show at Burning Man
We flew the first drone show at Burning Man in 2018 and came back in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
3,000 drones, a Guinness World Record
At Noor Riyadh, Desert Swarm grew Franchise Freedom to 3,000 drones moving as one flock, and set the Guinness World Record for the largest drone bird swarm.
2.2 million people
1,500 drones opened Shakira’s free concert on Copacabana beach for 2.2 million people, under the Studio DRIFT label.
189 press articles
The New York Times, CNN, Wired, Dezeen and many more have covered our shows.
Impact, not price tag
Not every show needs us. Let’s find out together.
We take the shows that have to make an impact: a launch with one shot, a city that wants its people to look up together, a couple who want their story told once, perfectly. Big or small isn’t the point; impact is. Some of our best work was modest in size.
Our partners at Sky Elements fly every kind of show at every scale, from a few hundred drones to record-breaking fleets, and they are the best in the world at it. If that is what your event needs, we’ll happily introduce you. If it has to land, talk to us.
What a drone show costsWhat are you planning?
Impact
The crowd goes home and keeps talking.
A show lasts ten minutes. The clips of it travel for weeks. These are the numbers from our own Instagram alone, before the client’s channels, the press and the people who filmed it themselves.
- 7.5M
- Video views
- 760k
- Likes
- 4k
- Comments
- 169
- Posts
“Congratulations on culminating so many years of hard work with such a beautiful gift to the city”
@chetindurak · franchise freedom in new york central park
“One of the most beautiful art pieces ever. So emotional and needed for our community at that time. Thank you to the artists for their gift ❤️”
@monicalynn3tree · free burn 2021
“my wife walked down the aisle to this intro ❤️”
@karlneville11 · a wedding with old and new memories
“You guys nailed it once more. Hope I can see one of your performances live one day… maybe in Amsterdam?”
@magari.maelis · burning man
As seen in
All press
Let’s collaborate
Have a story that belongs 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.