Modulo Pi: powering Eric Clapton’s latest tour

We go inside Eric Clapton’s 2026 world tour, which recently wrapped its European leg. While Clapton owned the stage, Modulo Pi’s Modulo Kinetic media server was the tech star

Known all over the world as one of rock music’s most prolific lead guitarists, Eric Clapton returned to European stages earlier this year, playing some cities for the first time in two decades – and some for the first time ever.

Blending his signature rock-and-blues music style with contemporary visual storytelling, the British musician teamed up with the Canadian company Monochrome Project to design the tour’s content. They placed Modulo Pi’s Modulo Kinetic media server at its centre.

Blues Power 

Kicking off the European leg of his 2026 world tour, Clapton hit Guildford, England for two nights before jetting over to Amsterdam, the tour’s official starting point. From there, he stopped over in ten major cities, with the itinerary including his first-ever solo performance in Krakow, Poland – as well as highly anticipated returns to Barcelona, Madrid and Budapest.

To make each show unforgettable for attendees, the production team went with a visual backdrop that would honour Clapton’s musical catalogue while giving long-time fans something engaging yet intimate. Monochrome Project stepped up to the plate, collaborating with Normal Studio on the tour’s motion design.

Each European show had three ROE Visual CB5 LED screens, located upstage and towering 10.2 metres high. Rather than only blasting out pre-rendered graphics, the walls displayed both these visuals and live camera feeds. That video package included five Sony HDC-4800 high-definition cameras for the main shots, four Panasonic AW-UE150 PTZ cameras for more unique angles and a Grass Valley Korona V-Series switcher to tie them all together.

Modulo Kinetic Version 7, the latest release of Modulo Pi’s media server, was the anchor, powering the LED walls via a Kinetic Designer workstation connected to two redundant V-Node servers.

Everyone’s a star

For Clapton, the 2026 world tour isn’t a one-man show; he ensured his seven-piece band and backing vocalists got their fair share of screen time, too. Mathieu Coutu, Monochrome Project’s founder and the tour’s video director, says, “Eric Clapton’s initial intention, as a bluesman, was to be able to showcase all the musicians simultaneously. Modulo Kinetic is used to open multiple boxes of varying sizes, displaying different camera angles on the LED screens.” The resulting multi-window layout allows fans to watch Clapton rip a solo on his Stratocaster while keeping an eye on the keyboardist, drummer and others on stage.

In live music, timing is everything, which is why Modulo Kinetic was the top choice for its real-time data processing and ultra low latency of under two frames per second. Thanks to the practically non-existent lag, Coutu and his team at Monochrome Project could apply visual effects to the live feeds on the fly – all without adding latency.

Running a preview build of Version 7, the crew could experiment with next-gen features like stylised comet trails, old-timey filters and live parameter controls, allowing the video team to play their tech like an instrument. Modulo Pi’s developers built these effects in collaboration for this project, but they have since been integrated into the software for all users.

Modulo Kinetic also ensured that automation reigned supreme, tracking tally signals directly from the camera switcher and using the media server’s task and compute graphs to trigger visual changes. In the director’s chair, Coutu operated a custom interface – created within Modulo Kinetic – that displayed a three-dimensional simulation of the stage. It also re-mapped the cameras’ views onto virtual screens, so he would always know what the audience was seeing.

A long way from home

Clapton’s European leg wrapped in Munich on 17 May; now, the crew is prepping to move the tour across the Atlantic. The six North American shows begin in September, hitting the Midwest only (Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, St Paul, Milwaukee and Kansas City).

If the European shows were any indication, American fans are in for a visual treat; they can expect Clapton’s discography to meet the cutting edge of live music production, all thanks to Modulo Kinetic.

Learn more at modulo-pi.com

This article was first published in the Autumn 2026 issue of LIVE.