Behind the scenes of Zayn Malik’s Konnakol Tour

Words Katie Kasperson 

We catch up with the team behind Zayn’s Konnakol Tour, who kept it simple for the English singer’s first solo arena stint

When Zayn Malik left One Direction for his own musical pursuits, it was a sad day for Directioners – but a new beginning for the English artist. A decade into his solo career, Zayn announced his first arena headline tour (and second solo tour), the Konnakol Tour, named after his fifth studio album. With nine dates in the UK, Mexico and South America, the tour comes immediately after his 2026 Las Vegas residency – but brings Zayn closer to his audience than ever.

“The brief was about simplicity,” begins Finn Ross, video creative director at Fray Studio. “It wasn’t about a vastly abstract concept; it was more about placing Zayn front and centre for the fans.”

Fray Studio, the London-based design house that handled the tour’s video, animation and projection components, began work on Konnakol roughly eight weeks before it kicked off at London’s O2 Arena. Ross built a reduced, atmospheric world – and leaned on R&B influences to do so. “We looked at some alternative R&B shows, like Drake and Dave, as reference points. The idea I became interested in was: how do we achieve intimacy at scale? We have the real Zayn and then a big Zayn that everyone can see and connect with. How do we make that meaningful?”

The Art of Worldbuilding 

Lighting designer Tim Routledge – who’s worked with Zayn on both his previous tour and his Vegas residency – spearheaded the initial development, creating a simple, two-toned look for Konnakol. “The thing with Zayn is: he’s quite stationary,” explains Routledge. “He likes his band tight to him. We looked at how to sit Zayn somewhere that the band encompasses him, while still immersing him and allowing him to get on and off stage easily – and the main way to do that is through video.”

Ross ran with this idea, developing a video look that aligned with Routledge’s lighting design and colour palette. He added a live camera into the mix to provide visual content that they could then animate, rather than a raw feed. “We could take various scenes and build, organise and play with them, such as layerings, grids or columns – all sorts of interesting stuff to create a universe for Zayn to exist in, as opposed to just putting his face on a screen.” Ross hoped to give the visuals a ‘musicality and a rhythm to work with’, to immerse fans even further.

“That got us to a nice point, where we could have conversations with Zayn’s management and begin a creative dialogue. ‘This is where we’re at. What do you think? How does it resonate? Is this the right or the wrong idea?’” he paraphrases. “From there, you start to figure out what’s working for everyone. Some ideas leave the process, some develop, some new ones join.

“Once we’re fairly happy with the world we’re building,” Ross continues, “in terms of still frames, then we move on to motion. Because the timing was quite tight, we slammed straight into all songs. We’d send over Frame.io links to be commented on and reviewed, and that is a rolling process – you do it as it comes. That collaboration rolled forward and continued on-site.”

Routledge designed a circular stage for Zayn and his band to populate. “It wasn’t in the round, but his fans were nestled into him. He came up on a lift, and we had roller drops surrounding him with projection, and a huge wraparound screen behind him.” This was made of ROE Visual Vanish V8 panels and fed signals via a Disguise GX 3 media server. ARRI supplied the camera system.

Sound takes centre STAGE

Zayn’s musical talent speaks for itself – and on Konnakol, this was to remain the main attraction. “His voice is extraordinary,” exclaims Routledge.

The audio, therefore, had to do it justice.

Clair Global provided the sound system, blending a DiGiCo Quantum 5 with two Universal Audio Apollo x16Ds, two Fourier Audio transform.engines, as well as products by Rupert Neve Designs for the front-of-house set-up. For loudspeakers, they selected d&b audiotechnik’s KSL Series for its scalability, full-bandwidth directivity control and on-stage rejection.

“DiGiCo consoles are my go-to,” begins Lee McMahon, FOH engineer on Konnakol, who worked with Clair Global and system engineer Anthony Kappel on the audio design. “The flexibility is one of the top selling points for me; I love that it’s a blank canvas, and I can make the show sound how I want it to.” The set-up also afforded redundancy ‘using multiple DiGiCo DMI cards’ on a Dante network. “Not that we ever hope to use the backup – but given the stakes, we had to have an option in the event of hardware failure.”

McMahon purchased his own Fourier transform.engine, so he could plan the tour’s audio at home. “Having the ability to prep shows is fantastic,” he admits.

The sound system blended into the background, letting the visuals lead while giving fans what they came for – Zayn’s voice. “The music must work in tandem with all other elements,” notes McMahon. Zayn doesn’t use in-ear monitors, “so a lot of thought goes into keeping the stage sound as clean as possible.”

Thanks to the stage’s circular design, fans could get up close and personal – but this meant that they’d be right underneath the main PA. To avoid gaps, Kappel developed the ‘showerhead PA’, “an upstage pair of KSL loudspeakers flown very high, above the video wall,” says McMahon. “No matter where the audience stood, they were covered with front fill or showerhead, even if they were well out of the main PA’s range.”

Live and in colour

The Konnakol Tour didn’t just present acoustic challenges; Routledge had to get creative with light placement too. “We put a ring of lights around the stage edge, but on these clever lifts so they could rise and fall,” he details. “They could peek up above the stage and then go a bit higher, so we could create different architectures. We had two concentric rings of Martin Lighting’s MAC Ultra Performance and Roxxlight blinders, and then behind the screen we put a whole grid of ROXX colour blinders.”

During Zayn’s Vegas stretch, Routledge doubled down on pink; on Konnakol, he opted for green and amber. “We wanted to give Zayn a look rather than chasing colours,” he shares. “We tried to keep within certain worlds without disappearing too far. When you can give yourself a bit of discipline, you do better.”

Due to some unforeseen events, the Konnakol dates shifted – and Routledge could no longer be on-site. He brought on Michael Straun, who served as his associate LD while he lit up Eurovision. The whole system – lighting, audio and video – was signed off before the tour began, remaining identical for the South American leg, which picks up in October.

While Konnakol wasn’t designed to be groundbreaking, Ross found it refreshing. “I wouldn’t say it was a radical deviation from how to put on a pop show, but it felt exciting and different,” he comments. “The fans and their responses to the show when they saw it… it had a resonance.”

Ross believes there’s a wider trend at play in the live music world, where cameras are becoming ‘a more integral part of how we see the artists’ shows and how we see them within their shows. It’s about creating an environment and an atmosphere’ – and Routledge agrees.

“It’s about creating different worlds – asymmetrical or symmetrical worlds, line looks that encompass him in a scene. The goal was to create one great look per song with some flourishes, rather than an over-the-top light show. He’s not going to fly; there aren’t any big props; there aren’t dancers. It’s about the music and him.”

What more can fans really ask for?