PSY's Summer Swag concert makes a splash, with visuals powered by Disguise

K-Pop star PSY, of Gangnam Style fame, is known for his high-octane, four-hour-long, open-air summer arena spectacles, where fans dress in blue and are constantly doused with water cannons and sprinklers.

The popular annual concert series, known as “Summer Swag”, always draws in mass crowds from across South Korea, and the 2025 tour was no different. All 16 performances across nine cities sold out at rapid speed, with up to 30,000 fans attending each show. The 2025 performances cranked the energy up higher with surprise guest appearances from Blackpink’s Rosé, BTS’s J-Hope, and rapper G-Dragon. 

Among the constant blasts of water, huge crowds, and the sea of blue t-shirts, creative agency VICO needed to deliver visuals that would add even more electric energy to the stage. VICO led the design, video production, and technical operations of the tour’s large-scale screens, bringing Disguise into their workflow to achieve their biggest, boldest visuals to date.

The challenge

Hyungsub Park, Director of VICO Creative, has worked on the Summer Swag concerts since 2011, developing computer graphic concepts and stage visuals together with PSY himself.

Park explains: “Our work comes with a tremendous sense of responsibility and commitment. Our main objective [in 2025] was to ensure that the 12K high-resolution graphics and the live broadcast feed – with clean keying – were delivered seamlessly on stage. Achieving smooth integration between the live camera signals and the graphics was essential to the project’s success.”

The VICO team therefore needed to find a media server that could handle the heavy data loads without compromising on visual quality or disrupting the live audience experience. Their visuals needed to match PSY’s wide range of music, from K-Pop, rap, rock, and ballads, and each venue had its own varying needs and set-up.

The intense conditions of the concerts also added a layer of complexity. Summer Swag takes place across the swelteringly-hot Korean summer, where temperatures can exceed 39°C. The team therefore needed to rely on equipment that could withstand the extreme heat, and could survive the risk of spray coolers and water bombs affecting the equipment. 

The solution

VICO Creative put their trust into Disguise’s GX 3 media servers to power the screens for PSY’s shows after successful tests to ensure they could meet the technical demands of the performance. could meet the technical demand of the performances. 

Park explains: “The project unfolded over two months of intensive CG development [and] working with Disguise was highly collaborative and reassuring. Their team offered practical guidance throughout the process, enabling us to build a stable and reliable system for the entire tour.”

With the GX 3s, the team could project intense graphics at pixel-perfect quality across every stadium. For example, during PSY’s cover of the ballad ‘Blue Whale’ (흰수염고래) by South Korean rock band YB, the team were able to create a spectacular light show of humpback whales seemingly swimming through the air.

Another example was for ‘We Are The One’, a PSY original that features traditional Korean instruments. The creative team produced heavy graphics of expressive Korean motifs. For the introduction and instrumental parts of the song, the entire 12K canvas was fully graphical with no live feed in order to maximise the visual impact in the stadium.

The results

Summer Swag has become one of the most popular summer events in South Korea, inspiring a whole new phenomenon of ‘waterbomb’ shows - and 2025 was the biggest year yet.

Park says: “With Disguise integrated into the workflow, we were able to deliver visuals of even higher quality. Being able to elevate such a legendary show and contribute to an experience that audiences truly love is something we are incredibly proud of.”