Signal Festival: 5 must-see installations plus a visitor's survival guide

The 13th edition of Signal Festival transforms Prague into an outdoor gallery of light, projection, and digital art. With 20 installations across two routes, Centrum and Vinohrady, here's what not to miss and how to navigate the crowds without losing your mind.

For the first time in Signal's 13-year history, the 70-meter tower of the Old Town Hall becomes a projection canvas. Italian studio mammasONica transforms Prague's most iconic landmark into a monumental digital artwork. This alone justifies braving the crowds.

After three years, video mapping returns to the popular Vinohrady location of the Basilica of St. Ludmila. Spanish studio V.P.M. merges futuristic architectural structures with the fixed geometry of the church’s historic façade. The work presents the city as a living organism.

Taiwan's Peppercorns studio creates Světlo Tzolk’inu a 3D projection on a 10-meter-high, 20-meter-wide water wall that looks like a massive hologram floating above the Vltava. Light, movement, and music merge into something genuinely otherworldly. Peppercorns also created the circular light installation Between Mountains and Seas at Republic Square.

The monumental video installation Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) by American video art pioneer Bill Viola explores encounters with death, offering a profound experience in a sacred space that once served as a mausoleum. This stunning installation has previously been exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris, London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

The Vinohrady route highlights Czech artists. Pavla Sceranková created the interactive installation Constellation in Riegrovy Sady, allowing visitors to create their own light constellations. Czech collective Rafani transforms a public garden into a ritual space with fire effects and loud music. The performance runs three times each evening, creating a visceral, participatory experience. Antonín Kindl presents the interactive object OKO – a sensory machine that continuously analyzes its surroundings.

Seven installations in the Signal INSIDE zone open spaces normally inaccessible to the public. Festival program manager Daniel Burda recommends the dance performance Lone Soul Disco at Vinohrady’s Tresor Club "a unique opportunity to experience a nightclub as an art installation, blurring the line between disco and immersive art."

Festival director Martin Pošta highlights the light installation Lux Domus by Josep Poblet, located in the functionalist chapel of the Archbishop’s Gymnasium near the Basilica of St. Ludmila:

“It’s an extraordinarily poetic installation that works with light in a sensitive, almost meditative way. Using simple mechanical elements – boxes, elastic bands, lenses, and prisms – the artist bends analog light into spatial architecture. The result is a quiet, focused experience where light itself becomes the creator of space. For me, it’s truly magical.”