Eid Al Etihad 54
A celebration uncovered
The UAE wasn't founded on a single day. It was founded on a belief that's still being uncovered - and for the fifth year running, we were asked to tell that story again
For the fifth year running, we were asked to lead the UAE’s founding celebration. This year it had two things to hold at once: the nation’s 54th Eid Al Etihad, and the unveiling of the Zayed National Museum.
The brief was to honour Sheikh Zayed’s legacy without turning it into a monument – land, discovery and identity, sitting alongside a live cultural landmark opening for the first time.
We built the ceremony as an excavation.
A sunken stage, purpose-designed to echo the museum’s own architecture, put performers, objects and moments literally beneath the audience, as if the show was being unearthed rather than staged.
Guests entered through majlis-inspired spaces, then descended into the heart of it.
The story opened in darkness. Sheikh Zayed’s journey came first, then archive film, then the UAE National Orchestra performing for the first time, then the museum itself, revealed as the closing act of its own origin story.
Projection, sound, drones and aerial choreography moved with the narrative rather than over it – each layer added meaning, not just spectacle.
A national orchestra debuted. A museum opened. A nation’s founding was told through descent, not display – through discovery, not ceremony for ceremony’s sake.
Five years in, the story hasn’t repeated itself once.
A country that keeps digging into its past will always find new ways to tell its future.
