The Great Pantone 375 C Illusion: Is the Equestrian World Championship Grass Actually Painted?

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Outside, a state of emergency reigns. The ground is cracked, the meadows in the surrounding area have long since turned into a sad, dusty yellow, and even the weeds by the roadside have capitulated to the murderous heat. Anyone walking through the country this summer is looking at one single, massive drought landscape.

Right into this brown wasteland nests the venue for this year's World Equestrian Games. Yet instead of a withered steppe, visitors are greeted by a botanical miracle: rich, glowing, almost aggressive shades of green that contrast sharply with the scorched reality. A sight that inevitably arouses the suspicion that nature is not at work here, but rather the paint can.

To be precise: Pantone 375 C.

The Hue of Suspicion

Anyone taking a close look at the tournament turf cannot shake the impression that an exact, industrial color standard was used here. Pantone 375 C – that iconic, flashy green tone usually known from freshly printed glossy posters, brand logos, or plastic bags. It is a green that no sun can burn and no dry spell can touch, simply because it comes out of a bucket.

While rivers are banned from water extraction in the surrounding communities and every potted plant on the balcony fights for survival, the tournament grounds radiate in a state that is physically quite impossible. The obvious conclusion, therefore, is that the blades of grass did not grow. They were painted. Because watering things would be rather critically viewed in the current situation, after all.

The Groundstaff's Nocturnal Secret

How are we to picture this process logistically? When the last spectators leave the grounds late in the evening and the floodlights go out, the real work begins.

The Night Operation: A strike team of specialized groundstaff in protective suits moves in. Equipped with heavy knapsack sprayers and hundreds of liters of waterproof acrylic paint in the exact shade of Pantone 375 C, they methodically pull stripe after stripe across the area. Every single blade is precisely wetted to maintain the perfect, photogenic illusion for international television broadcasts the next day.

Aesthetics Triumph Over Common Sense

In the end, this meticulous paint job reveals the perfect symbol of our time. It doesn't matter if the world outside is burning, rivers are drying up, and resources are dwindling – as long as the scenery is right, the money flows, and the cameras deliver a flawless picture, the world is fine for the event managers.

Whether the blades were actually dipped by hand into Pantone 375 C, or whether questionable masses of water are at play here, threatening the flora and fauna of a wild stream nearby ... who knows?

Given this green amid the drought-stricken landscape, the paint theory naturally remains the only one that truly makes sense.

Source: taz article, 12.08.2026