Channel Five has won the competition for the organization and broadcast of the "Scarlet Sails" holiday

Channel Five has won the competition for the organization and broadcast of the alumni celebration "Scarlet Sails-2025". The results of the competitive selection are published on the official website of the Government of St. Petersburg.

As Mikhail Kolpakhchiev, the chief director of the water pyrotechnic show, noted, every year the team comes up with new solutions, not only ideological and semantic, but also visual.

"We're trying out ideas that maybe no one has ever implemented. We work in a complex genre, where there is an eclectic mix of performing arts, cinematography, and choreographic art. There are definitely a lot of realized ideas in this direction, so we always have a super task ahead of us — to embody something new, fresh, mix something with something or cross it and get an original effect. I hope we will be able to surprise the audience," he said.

Channel Five was at the origin of the revival of "Scarlet Sails". For the first time, the Leningrad graduation ball was held in 1968, but after 11 years the beautiful annual tradition was interrupted. 20 years ago, on the initiative of the ROSSIYA Joint-Stock Bank, the government of St. Petersburg and Channel Five, the ship with scarlet sails reappeared in the waters of the Neva River. Channel Five has been the organizer of the water pyrotechnic show for several years in a row. Since 2005, he has been continuously providing live television coverage of the legendary graduation.

"Scarlet Sails" is a landmark event for all TV crews, which involves a huge number of people. It's a large-scale area that needs to be covered with cameras. And for us, the broadcast is a kind of creative report," said Roman Butovsky, director of the television broadcast of the Scarlet Sails 2025 holiday.

Now the legendary prom is a business card not only of St. Petersburg, but also of the whole of Russia, a multiple winner of prestigious international competitions and awards in the field of the event industry. In April of this year, the festival received the prestigious award of the XIII annual national award "Event of the Year" in the nomination "Best Director and production of the event" in the category "Innovative solution of the Year".

Channel Five will broadcast the graduation ceremony live on June 28, 2025.

In 2024, "Scarlet Sails" was seen by a record number of viewers — almost 37 million. The television audience of the holiday in Russia and the CIS countries was 25.5 million people. The number of views of the online broadcast on the Internet is 11.3 million.

The share of the entire holiday on the air of the Fifth in the channel's key audience "All 25-59" reached 7.7%. This is a record high in the history of graduation.

The broadcast of the water and pyrotechnic show on the Fifth took the first place of the federal broadcast in the same audience "All 25-59" with a share of 11.4%.