// BRITs

THE BRIT AWARDS 2026.

CO-OP LIVE ARENA, MANCHESTER // 2026

NorthHouse joins the BRITs in the north for a new visual identity!

For this year’s BRIT Awards, hosted for the first time in Manchester, we designed and delivered the screen visuals, broadcast package, and digital suite with the ambition to create a unified visual identity that translated seamlessly across live performance, broadcast, and online platforms.

With the BRITs landing in a new venue, it presented an opportunity to rethink the show’s visual identity, integrating an ambitious stage design to work seamlessly for both the live arena audience and the national broadcast.

Working in close collaboration with set designer Misty Buckley’s multi-stage, kinetic ‘space station’, we extended the physical architecture of the stage into expansive digital worlds, using light, colour and motion to expand the stage into the arena.

Monumental LED canvases became portals to otherworldly, dynamic and immersive environments, resulting in a carefully crafted visual ecosystem.

| IMAGES : ITV Footage

CREATIVE VISION & ART DIRECTION

Ambition visually defined the 2026 BRIT Awards. The idea that “The BRITs have landed in Manchester” - marking the show’s move to a new chapter - steered the show’s identity.

The set design evoked the interior of a space station - a landing site where interconnected stages acted as portals. Taking the narrative from this physical set design, our visuals were built not only to integrate with the architecture but to celebrate it. The panoramic screen allowed us to create vast worlds, immersing audiences in an additional layer that expanded the spatial depth of the iconic stage design.

We developed four distinct house looks - Earth, Water, Bionic and Fire - each defined by a bold, recognisable colour palette. Every world evolved from a fundamental element, balancing natural environments with a futuristic touch while creating depth within surfaces through an array of advanced visual techniques.

A prevalent visual motif throughout the show was lenticular glass, which became a signature modern and sophisticated material of the visual language. Its reflective and refractive qualities allowed environments to shift and distort behind the surface, creating depth while visually merging the physical architecture with the screen visuals.

In contrast to the atmospheric environments created for the nomination packages, built around the four elemental worlds, we also supported the creative direction and delivered the screen visuals for individual artist performances, including the Ozzy Osbourne tribute, which required a completely different register focused on dynamic and rhythmical animation.

Broadcast GFX and branding were developed in tandem with the stage visuals through extensive collaborative refinement. Particular care went into the 3D texturing and lighting of this year’s BRIT Awards trophy, highlighting its distinctive amber, honey-like materiality.

The result was an awards show with a strong identity, composition and pace across the show’s visual ecosystem.

LIVE SHOW.

BROADCAST.

MUSIC.

AWARDS.

| IMAGES : NorthHouse

““THE BRITs ACHIEVED THE HIGHEST PEAK SHARE FOR ANY COMMERCIAL PROGRAMME IN THE 2026 CALENDAR. SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT ON THE BRITs OWNED CHANNELS BROKE RECORDS [...] INSTAGRAM LED THE WAY WITH 162M VIEWS, UP 400% FROM 32.4M VIEWS IN THE SAME PERIOD LAST YEAR [...] YOUTUBE BROADCAST THE SHOW TO NON-UK VIEWERS [...] WITH VIEWS DOUBLING COMPARED TO 2025, WITH OVER ONE MILLION TUNING IN FROM OVERSEAS. THERE WERE MORE THAN FOUR MILLION VIEWS OF CONTENT ON THE BRITs’ YOUTUBE CHANNEL.”

- ANDRE PAINE, MUSICWEEK”

| IMAGES : NorthHouse

TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

The stage design was an ambitious multi-surface environment built around kinetic towers, a vast panoramic back wall and a series of floor and podium screens. In total, we delivered visuals across nine discrete surfaces, amounting to a combined canvas of 91 megapixels.

Playback was handled by the Disguise VX4+, chosen for its ability to manage extreme resolutions while maintaining the highest output quality and frame smoothness. As this was an awards show rather than a generative live performance, all media was fully pre-rendered using a combination of tools including Notch, Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine, EmberGen and After Effects.

Previsualisation in Unreal Engine was essential, particularly given the tower geometry and how it interacted with the back wall visuals across different audience sightlines.