Channel Five has won the competition for the organization and broadcast of "Scarlet Sails-2026"

Channel Five has once again become the organizer of the Scarlet Sails Alumni Celebration and will broadcast it live on June 27, 2026. The results of the competitive selection are published on the website of the Government of St. Petersburg.

The alumni holiday "Scarlet Sails" is the brightest and most recognizable tradition of the region. For the first time, the Leningrad graduation ball was held in 1968, but 11 years later the celebration was interrupted. The event was revived in 2005 on the initiative of ROSSIYA Joint Stock Bank, the Government of St. Petersburg and Channel Five.

Channel Five has been the organizer of the water pyrotechnic show for several years in a row. In addition, since 2005, he has been providing a live television broadcast of the graduation ceremony. Today, Scarlet Sails 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.

At the end of May 2026, the concert part of the Scarlet Sails 2025 festival received the prestigious Silver Mercury award from one of Russia's key creative awards in the Best Mass Event category. Alexey Bulgakov, technical director of the concert on Palace Square, noted that every year the Scarlet Sails are watched not only by graduates attending the festival, but also by a multi-million audience at the screens.

"We will use all possible technical solutions so that the audience can experience the magical atmosphere and the grand scale of the event. This time we are faced with a non-trivial task: the scene includes many high-rise points, and the action will unfold in several locations simultaneously. This will require non-standard solutions to cover the entire area and find unexpected angles. Traditionally, moving cameras on rails and basic filming equipment will be used, which will provide a viewing angle of 270 degrees. Reverse plans from the stage to the audience are provided. The camera, installed at a height of 47 meters, will show the scale of the celebration," he said.

In 2025, the legendary graduation was seen by 45.7 million people worldwide, including an online audience and international reach. This figure was the highest in the entire history of the project.

The live broadcast of the holiday on Channel Five set four records at once. The shares in the channel's key audience of "All 25-59" and the base audiences of "All 18+" and "All 4+" reached their highest levels in recent years — 8.6%, 8.3% and 8.3%, respectively. The share of the female audience of "25-59" is even higher — 10.1%, which secured the first place among federal TV channels.

The broadcast of the water pyrotechnic show on Channel Five also took the first place among all national broadcasters in four audiences at once.: "All 25-59" (13.2%, a record), "All 18+" (12.9%), "All 4+" (13%) and "Women 25-59" (15.3%). The water and pyrotechnic show was also broadcast on other federal channels. It was watched by almost every third viewer over the age of 18. The combined share of the broadcast on the four channels was 31.8%.

The online broadcast of the holiday on the Internet gathered 13.7 million viewers. Another 300,000 people watched the graduation live on large street screens in major cities.

Waiting for the wave: "Scarlet Sails" prepared a water theater on Dvortsovaya and a new brig path

How are the preparations for the main alumni holiday going?

In anticipation of the "Scarlet Sails" in 2026, the launch of the Russia in the Baltic project was planned in St. Petersburg. On June 25, celebrations of cruising sailing yachts on a non-stop cruise to Kaliningrad will take place on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment. A horn from the icebreaker Krasin will give the start of the transition. The sailboats will act as symbolic ambassadors of St. Petersburg, the cradle of the Russian sailing fleet.

In 2025, the graduation celebration was held on the night of June 29. More than 100,000 schoolchildren from all over the country and abroad came to see the unique spectacle. The highlight of the event was the appearance of the brig Rossiya.