Big Blue Marble has revealed details of its work supporting ORF’s production of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026.
Engineered by the Professional Services team at Big Blue Marble, the cloud-based infrastructure helped enable live transmission of the semi-finals and final across Austria, reaching a television audience of 1,5 million and an additional 160,000 online streams. Using AWS MediaConnect, the live signal was sent from ORF’s encoders into the AWS cloud via SRT-based signal contribution for onward delivery to around 80 recipients for public viewing.
The Big Blue Marble architecture ensured full redundancy across two AWS regions, with strict access controls maintaining secure distribution. Live signal processing, monitoring and delivery were orchestrated via Big Blue Marble’s Cloud Video Kit. The solution’s integrated monitoring and AI-assisted anomaly detection provided the Big Blue Marble support team with early warning capability, allowing members to act immediately whenever something needed attention and ensuring continuity of service, said the company.
Harald Kräuter, director of technology and digitalisation at ORF, commented, “The Eurovision Song Contest 2026 showcases the exceptional technological expertise of ORF and its subsidiary, Big Blue Marble, which is both top-tier and internationally competitive. The ability to provide high-quality viewing of the contest at over 50 public locations across Austria demonstrates our commitment to public service. We can take pride in this level of competence.”
“The European Song Contest 2026 was a demanding live environment, both in terms of scale and operational pressure. Our job was to make sure the stream worked reliably from signal processing through to delivery, without turning the technology into the story. The event showed that Big Blue Marble can deliver ‘broadcast-grade’ throughout different means of delivery, just as our customers expect from traditional television services,” added Krzysztof Bartkowski, CEO streaming and cloud media at Big Blue Marble.
