The Eurovision Song Contest is back!

The contest, now in its 70th year, is taking place in Vienna, Austria after the country won last year's contest with the song "Wasted Love" by JJ. Which country's entry will win this year and earn the honor of hosting next year's competition? (Odds makers are currently showing Finland as the favorite)

For those not familiar with the contest (first off, where've ya been because I do these posts every year!) here's a quick summary - Eurovision was created in 1956 as a way to help heal the fractured European continent after World War II. Any country that is part of the European Broadcasting Union can take part in the contest as can countries outside the EBU so long as they are invited to (which is why a country like Australia can take part in it); Five countries pay more into the EBU than others - the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain - so they automatically qualify for the Grand Final (this year Spain decided not to take part in the contest...we'll get to why in a minute) as does the previous year's winning country if it is not one of the Big Five (so Austria's entry this year also automatically qualifies) while all other participants have to get through a semi-final first to get to make the Grand Final (there are over 30 countries taking part each year so they have to whittle it down just to keep the run time down).

Songs have to be written by at least one songwriter from the country the song represents (the music act does not have to be from that country though, which is why Celine Dion could represent Switzerland in 1988 - and won it, by the way), the song has to be an original track that has not yet been released to the public before the submission window is open, no more than 3 minutes long, and must contain both music and lyrics. Performances cannot feature more than 6 people on stage (that includes dancers, band members, back up singers, or whoever else an act may choose to include in the performance) and instruments are techncially not being played live if any are being used on stage, but the singing is.

Voting is a little complicated - it's a mix of professional juries (each country has one) and viewer votes and no jury or viewer can vote for their home country's entry. People in countries not participating (like the US) can also vote; those votes get compiled into a "rest of the world" viewer vote tally.

The show usually has an opening performance of some kind, often featuring the previous year's winning artist doing a new song, then a parade of participating countries ala the Olympics, then the hosts will chat a little to welcome viewers and tell them about voting methods and how to keep track of what info you need to vote since votes are not collected until after the last performance. After that it's straight into performances. The semifinals this year will each feature 15 songs with 10 advancing to the finale; the Grand Final will feature 26 songs as it always does. Each performance is proceeded by a "postcard" featuring the act coming up - this gives commentators for each country time to relay a little info about the act and also reiterate their voting info - and then they perform. There are no commercials at any point during the contest but occasionally the hosts will slow the pace a bit with some random chat (sometimes this is to give time to adjust the set for the next act). After all 26 performances they open up the voting lines and do a few recaps and there's also a few interval acts as well both to give time for voting and for tallying up the votes. After votes are tallied up they begin the long process of revealing the vote totals, first from the juries and then from the public votes. The leaderboard can swing rapidly during this process but in the end someone will wind up victorious.

Okay, so admittedly that was a longer summary than planned but there's a lot to know about Eurovision... like this year's songs, which you can find here if you'd like to check out the videos ahead of the contest and maybe pick out a favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jnR-m5u5yQ&list=RD1jnR-m5u5yQ&start_radio=1

If you're interested in watching this year's contest, Semi-Final 1 will be held on Tuesday May 12th at 3pm ET/12pm PT and Semi-Final 2 will be on Thursday May 14th at the same time. The Grand Final will be held on Saturday May 16th at the same time as well (I will admit, watching the finale is a time comittment because the finale will likely run about 4 hours total including the voting and reading the results). This year American audiences have two ways to watch because the contest is streaming live both on Peacock and YouTube (the YouTube live stream is free, Peacock's is only available to subscribers). 

If you checked out this year's songs, let us know which ones you like the most... and if you're looking to do a deeper dive into Eurovision, maybe see if you've ever heard of anything from the contest (here's a hint, you definitely know a Eurovision song or two unless you've been living under a rock), well, here's a link to a video that compiles clips of all the top three songs from each contest from 1956 through 2025 to get you started (and there are still other songs that didn't make the top 3 that are pretty good too but that's an even deeper dive than I would expect anyone to make right off the bat)...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vta8xaAUE7Y&list=RDVta8xaAUE7Y&start_radio=1