So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye!
OK, I am going to call it a day here. Thank you so much for reading. My favourite song won, so I am happy. Was it a vintage year? Maybe not. Were there some surprises? Yes. Switzerland getting nothing from the public vote when it had done so well with the jury was astonishing. And the UK may have not won over the public, but at least they got a good haul from the jury. Nobody got nul points. And we will always have this moment …
Thank you for all your comments, and especially the lovely and kind messages I have had by email. I WILL HOPEFULLY SEE YOU SAME TIME, SAME PLACE, NEXT YEAR! Well done JJ. 🇦🇹🥳
Here are some more pictures of Austria’s JJ, who has just won the 69th Eurovision song contest. Nice.
The news of the protests surrounding Israel’s participation, when the country came so close to winning, serves to underline how difficult a situation it would be for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in the event of an Israeli victory.
The EBU would at that point have to decide whether it was safe to host the contest in Israel, and if it decided not, would presumably both offend Israel’s government with that decision, and have to find another EBU member to agree to co-host it on behalf of Israel. With some broadcasters already questioning the EBU’s policy over Israel’s participation there would potentially be a stronger prospect of a boycott at broadcaster level if Israel was a host or co-host.
My colleague Nadeem Badshah has this news report from earlier that a Eurovision crew member was hit with paint amid bid to disrupt tonight’s Israeli performance. In it, he writes:
A spokesperson for Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR, which is organising the contest, said: “At the end of the Israeli performance, a man and a woman tried to get over a barrier on to the stage. They were stopped. One of the two agitators threw paint and a crew member was hit. The crew member is fine and nobody was injured. The man and the woman were taken out of the venue and handed over to the police.”
There have also been protests over Israel’s participation in the city centre of Basel. Police used teargas and rolled in a water cannon truck to prevent demonstrators from marching through the centre of the northern Swiss city.
You can read the report here: Eurovision crew member hit with paint amid bid to disrupt Israeli performance
Austria will host next year. Vienna has done the honours before, but I would be tempted to suggest Salzburg as the ideal host. Fairytale castle, do it in the football stadium, it is the home of the Sound of Music. Job done.
Updated
Here is the moment JJ realised he had won.
JJ is reprising his winning song, which was my favourite this year, just as Nemo was last year, so maybe the message here is ultimately if you can produce a Eurovision entry that will appeal to a fiftysomething Guardian live blogger, you are sorted.
Here are the scores on the doors …
1. Austria 436
2. Israel 357
3. Estonia 356
4. Sweden 321
5. Italy 256
…
19 UK 88
…
26 San Marino 27
…
Still DNQ Australia, a disgrace
JJ’s message while accepting the trophy is for there to be “more love”.
AUSTRIA WINS THE EUROVISION CONTEST!!!! 🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🎉🎉🎉🎉
Austria has won the Eurovision song contest after JJ triumphed in Basel with their song Wasted Love, an operatic ballad with soaring vocals that mutates into a club anthem for the finale. It is the third time the country has won, with JJ following in the footsteps of Udo Jürgens in 1965 and Conchita Wurst in 2014.
Switzerland, which hosted the first ever Eurovision song contest in 1956, was the venue this year after Nemo won in Malmö last year with their song The Code. Austria will be expected to host in 2026, with Vienna having twice held the competition before.
Viennese-born JJ has a range from counter tenor to soprano, and studies classical music. He co-wrote the winning song with Teodora Spiric and Thomas Turner. JJ has previously appeared under his given name Johannes Pietsch on The Voice UK.
Switzerland get zero from the public. WTF? Only Austria can catch Israel. They need 100 points or so from the public.
Unless Israel is going to hold on here …
The winners are most likely going to be Italy, France, Switzerland or Austria
UK gets zero points from public vote for second year running
Remember Monday have scored zero points with the public as the UK entry performed poorly with the phone vote for the second year running. Having received 88 points from the juries, they will finish 19th.
Finland’s Ich Komme is not coming on top either etc etc
SERVING DID NOT GET SERVED. Just eight points from Malta from the public. Woah.
Albania have just one of those incredible rushes up the table, going from near the bottom to second with the public vote. Israel has become the new leader with 357 points. Last year’s winner had a combined score of 591, so they are unlikely to hold on to that.
Iceland avoid the dreaded nul points after getting zero from the jury but 33 from the public.
This is now the bit where the live blog descends into madness and then I just suddenly post X HAS WON! Countries leapfrog around like crazy during this section.
Here are the selected standings after the jury votes …
1. Austria 258
2. Switzerland 214
3. France 180
4. Italy 159
5. Netherlands 133
…
10 UK 88
…
26 Iceland 0
…
DNQ Australia in absolute travesty
✨✨✨ Twelve points from Greece to Cyprus! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ UNEXPECTED JURY SINGING KLAXON! ✨✨✨
This is the time of the year I trot out my anecdote about my increasing panic as it looked like Sam Ryder might win Eurovision in 2022, and I realised I had not pre-written a “UK wins Eurovision contest for first time in decades” story, just a slightly bland generic “Country x wins Eurovision” with a couple of blanks to be filled in. Those are, as you can imagine, very different stories to go into the paper.
So I was trying to write “SAM RYDER WINS!” for the Observer’s late edition and do the live blog at the same time and it was nightmare.
I suspect “REMEMBER MONDAY WINS!” is not going to be an issue for me this year, but I am getting slightly nervous that I hadn’t covered off a couple of possibilities. Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy have cleaned up with the juries here.
I have very much enjoyed the hosting by these two during this week of Eurovision competition. I’m starting a petition to get Hazel Brugger on to Taskmaster.
✨✨✨ SOPHIE ELLIS-BAXTER KLAXON! ✨✨✨
I was unfairly rather pleased when Czechia didn’t qualify because it always stresse me out that at Eurovision they go by the name Czechia but our style guide still insists on Czech Republic.
Austria, Switzerland and Italy are the three countries to beat at the moment, as we are getting halfway through the jury votes.
Only covering Eurovision would make me type out the sentence “a cartoon mouse from Italy has just unexpectedly given the UK 12 points”
Philipp Hansa, delivering the jury votes for Austria, was wearing an “Equality” T-shirt and made a somewhat pointed announcement which I expect will be broadly interpreted as being about the participation of Israel in the contest. There have been protests in Basel to coincide with the event today.
Honestly, the only thing I have ever live blogged that goes as maddeningly fast as the results coming through on Eurovision was one time I was following the women’s gold medal luge in the Winter Olympics and I swear by the time I had finished typing each competitor’s name they had finished their run and we were on to the next. I am assuming you are watching and will see the scores faster than I can type them, but if you are currently away from a screen, the early frontrunners are Austria, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Italy. For UK watchers, Remember Monday have picked up 18 jury points so far.
Eurovision results are 'Good to go!' as juries begin to give votes
We are about fifty minutes away from finding out who has won the 2025 Eurovision song contest. Austria has taken the first douze points, given by Sweden.
Forwarned is forearmed. This isn’t my first Eurovision rodeo, and experience tells me it is absolutely impossible to keep up with the scores once the voting starts. Especially as I’ve been drinking. Sophie Ellis-Bexter is doing the UK results. I live blogged her New Year’s Eve Disco Party a few months ago, and it is nice to have a recurring character in my live blogs who isn’t a politician. I also saw her playing live a few months ago, and I’d describe the experience as being like doing a Joe Wicks workout, but with added Abba cover versions. Incredible energy from her. Westlife’s Nicky Byrne is doing the honours for Ireland, which might excite people of a certain age.
You will also be getting a view of some former contestants during the results. Ukraine’s Jerry Heil, Israel’s Eden Golan and Georgia’s Nutsa Buzaladze are all back having performed last year. Spain’s 2022 entry Chanel Terrero will have their scores, and San Marino’s 2021 artist Senhit will present the result from their jury, which given the size of the country, is possibly everybody who lives there.
The scores from the Netherlands will come from Chantal Janzen, who co-presented the 2021 contest in Rotterdam, and 2010 contestant Safura Alizadeh will have the numbers from Azerbaijan. You might also recognise Lorella Flego, who has presented the scores from Slovenia in four of the last five years. And Italy’s presentation here is possibly going to be a little bit special.
I have had some lovely emails from people, thank you, and greetings sent from the US, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Australia and Poland among others, showing the appeal of the show.
I was particularly taken with the suggestion from Elina Rye-Onsaker in Norway that next year, as well as the bingo suggestions, we should run a sweepstake on the blog on how much the show over-runs because of jury vote announcements being over-long.
I am watching on my own now, because neither of my kids wanted to sit through the 90 minutes of so between Albania finishing and the result being announced. Boooooooo!
Fairplay to Nemo for managing to get two slots in the final. They opened the show with a reprise of last year’s winner The Code. They appear to have worn a lot less for their new song Unexplainable …
I had seen from pictures of the dress rehearsal on the news wire that we were going to get Käärijä and Baby Lasagna but did not realise it was going to be in this wrestling/boxing stand-off format. Fantastic. Cha Cha Cha should have won that year, it really should. This is fun. I hope they release this version for streaming somewhere.
When I am doing elections I am duty bound not to mention who I have voted for, but those rules don’t apply to Eurovision, so I have chucked my 15p-per-vote-via-app at Luxembourg, Lithuania, Austria, Latvia and Denmark. I did enjoy Finland and Malta too, but I think they will be alright by themselves. I am taking a break for a few minutes, here are a few pictures from the evening to tide you over.
AND THAT IS A WRAP! (Apart from the 90 minutes of interlude, voting and results)
✨✨✨ A bald man joins in halfway through and ruins a song! ✨✨✨
Honestly every time I hear this I really enjoy it and then suddenly I’m reminded, oh yeah, then that guy meanders all over it. Like when the Sugarcubes came out and everyone was absolutely enraptured by Björk’s voice but they kept having Einar waffle all over everything link total wind-up merchants.
26: 🇦🇱 Albania – Shkodra Elektronike with 'Zjerm'
They are named after Shkodër, where they come from, although they have both moved to Italy now, and they are dedicated to making modern electronic sounds heavily influenced by the music they left behind. I adore the string arrangement on this one, very cinematic.
✨✨✨ Inexplicable mask! ✨✨✨
I really hate those gurning animated uncanny valley statues on the video screen. Maybe it was a deliberate artistic choice but it just looked so much like AI slop that it ground my gears.
25: 🇸🇲 San Marino – Gabry Ponte with 'Tutta l'Italia'
A massive celebration of Italian culture from the tiny enclave that sits within Italy, made by Italian DJ Gabry Ponte. It isn’t his first brush with Eurovision, as he co-wrote Austria’s entry in 2022.
I am intrigued by a tiny country sending to the contest a song in praise of the culture that surrounds it but which it declined to join during Italy’s unification process, but maybe that is because I am a history nerd.
TRIVIA KLAXON: The best sand at Eurovision was in 2011 when Kseniya Simonova did live sand art as part of the backdrop for Mika Newton’s entry Angel, which was representing Ukraine. Check it out …
I mean it may well be too much prosecco but I’ve got quite teary now about this one. She is making a right mess of that stage, though.
24: 🇫🇷 France – Louane with 'Maman'
The “France don’t send a French ballad challenge” has been failed for another year. Louane is established in France as both a singer and actor. She is bringing a big powerful Adele-style ballad to the party with a message about motherhood – it is dedicated to her late mother – and this could do well I think.
My family watch party is somewhat smaller than this massive stadium party they are showing now. France are up next. I am going to take a five minute break …
There is a question whether the fact it is such a favourite will dampen voting enthusiasm on the night. It is infuriatingly catchy, and my sister, who has not heard or seen it before, is hooting with laughter next to me.
23: 🇸🇪 Sweden – KAJ with 'Bara bada bastu'
Here come tonight’s winners. A big favourite with the bookies, which seems to be true of anything Sweden ever enters, this has got massive drunk singalong Opus “Life is Life” vibes to it. Sweden nearly always sends an English language song – but not this. It is the first time Sweden’s entry is in Swedish since 1998 and the band are actually from Finland. I’ve no idea if their accents are any good. Anyway it is going to lodge itself in your brain and I’d wager only an unexpected huge public vote for something else is going to shift it from the top spot.
BREAK OUT THE SMILEY EMOJI IT IS THE ACID BREAKDOWN KLAXON 🙂🙂🙃🙂🙂
This one has been an absolute grower for me. I initially dismissed it as 90s club-lite but it has just lodged itself in my brain.
She earned bonus points earlier this week because she was a guest on Scott Mills’ BBC Radio 2 breakfast show and managed to swear live on air three times, bless her.
22: 🇩🇰 Denmark – Sissal with 'Hallucination'
This comes equipped with a naggingly familiar chord progression/synth arpeggio line, and I think Sissal will score well with this. She is from the Faroe Islands and cites Robyn as an influence, which will be pretty self-evident as the song goes along. I’ve come to really, really like it.
✨✨✨ Guitar shreddage! ✨✨✨
I am not bitter* but honestly why are we sitting through this when we could have had Milkshake Man or Laika Party. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?
[*We have established that I am bitter]
21: 🇵🇹 Portugal – Napa with 'Deslocado'
My theory is that somewhere at RTP HQ in Lisbon they have a big sack, and written on the side of it is “That ballad we usually send to Eurovision” and every year they have a rummage around and pull something out at random, and this year it is Napa. Once it gets going it has got a bit of a mid-period Paul McCartney & Wings about it. Only the band Napa could have been.
Here is the original performance with the original saucier lyrics, if you hadn’t seen it by the way
I mean, it is A LOT, eh …
I’ve got to be honest. You’ve got to be honest. It may be childish and irresponsible, but the song was just better with the swearing in it, wasn’t it? I’m curious where it ends up because I think it has established EUROVISION LEGEND STATUS for all time, as has she, but I wonder whether it might be too out there for some of the more conservative telephone votes?
It is a lot, isn’t it?
20: 🇲🇹 Malta – Miriana Conte with 'Serving'
The thing is all the hoopla around whether “serving kant” sounded like something else – IT DID – kind of risks her delivering a joke without a punchline here for the gazillions of viewers who haven’t been following the ins and out of whether she was allowed to say “serving kant” – SHE WASN’T – but she has got so much main-character energy that it has been an absolute joy watching her bring this to Eurovision.
We are about to get a very hard swerve between song 19 and song 20.
I like to imagine during rehearsals someone was going “Yeah, but can we make the direction a bit more Blair Witch Project” and that’s how we ended up with the whiplash bit.
I’m fond of this one, but I’ve also got a theory that whoever wrote the lyrics only had access to a GCSE French phrasebook, because we’ve established my French is pretty ropey but I can understand every word of this.
19: 🇨🇭 Switzerland – Zoë Më with 'Voyage'
There’s something really gently sweet about this entry, and she comes from Basel so it is lovely that she gets to represent her country in her home town. It is sweet, but melancholy with it, and has a unique presentation among the contestants this year, in that she is just basically staring down the barrel of a camera for the whole performance, directing it at the TV audience, not the hall. For that reason, I have to pre-emptively award it …
✨✨✨ Performance designed to look great on TV looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨
… but I kind of like it.
That was definitely ✨✨✨ Someone presses the button to make fire appear on stage! ✨✨✨
This is quite an angry glam racket, isn’t it? I don’t mean to be rude[*], but ten separate people are credited with writing the lyrics for this, and as far as I can tell the chorus goes “I’m a survivor, lai-la-la-lai-la-la-lai, survivor, lai-la-la-lai-la-la-lai, survivor”
My daughter just said “That is such an ick!” about the treadmill bit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Does this quiet bit count as an ✨✨✨ Abrupt genre change! ✨✨✨?
[*I probably am being rude]
18: 🇦🇲 Armenia – Parg with 'Survivor'
There is always one of these every year. A song I didn’t have particularly strong feelings about, assumed it wouldn’t qualify, didn’t sketch out an idea for an intro, and now here we all are in an awkward silence.
You don’t get many Eurovision acts actually wearing their glasses on stage. I approve. Not that I’m wearing my reading glasses for this live blog because I have to keep looking up at the TV too. That is my excuse, anyway.
17: 🇬🇷 Greece – Klavdia with 'Asteromata (Αστερομάτα)'
This one takes a little while to warm up, and the video screen is rather more dramatic than Klavdia’s performance, which is a little static in my book. The song speaks to the bond between mother and child, and between refugees and the lands they are forced to leave behind.
While this lot are wittering on with a skit or whatever, I’m going to take a quick pause for a couple of minutes to recharge my glass. In the meantime, this is old but gold from our archives, a gallery of some of the “best” Eurovision costumes up until 2014.
I just kind of can’t work out whether I like the stuttering edit gimmick or not in this song?
16: 🇩🇪 Germany – Abor & Tynna with 'Baller'
Germany have had an absolutely torrid time at Eurovision in recent years. Isaak’s Always on the Run in 2024 and Michael Schultee’s You Let Me Walk Alone in 2018 are the only time they’ve come higher than 25th since 2014. Will Abor & Tynna change that with Baller, the first German language German entry since 2007? I’m going to say … no. No, they aren’t.
✨✨✨ Someone presses the button to make fire appear on stage! ✨✨✨
I do like the end bit of this, and admire her energy, because by this live blogger’s calculations, she is less than a year younger than me, and I get tired out just watching Eurovision, let alone imagining being on stage competing in it.
15: 🇵🇱 Poland – Justyna Steczkowska with 'Gaja'
Justyna Steczkowska is taking a break from being one of the judges on Poland’s version of the Voice to have another crack at Eurovision. She actually opened the Grand Final in Dublin in 1995 with a song called Sana, which finished 18th that year and she is setting a new record for the longest gap between Eurovision appearances. This is nice enough but fairly standard Eurovision fodder of an electropop number with some eastern European trills and flourishes.
✨✨✨ Man plays three instruments in one song, but one of the instruments is rubbish ✨✨✨
Harmonica in the house. Pffffffft, I’m not a harmonica fan.
14: 🇮🇹 Italy – Lucio Corsi with 'Volevo essere un duro'
How do you follow that? Anyway, this has mellow 70s soft rock/glam vibes, plus ridiculously over-sized prop amps and a giant piano and giant shoulder pads so you can’t accuse them of not having tried to supersize the performance. If I had a criticism of it, it would be that it sounds like it could have been at any Eurovision in the late 1970s and 1980s, and maybe wouldn’t have been strong enough to stand out at that time, but it is a great number as part of this show.
ABSOLUTE EUROVISION. 10/10. NO NOTES.
✨✨✨ Abrupt genre change! ✨✨✨
This song is something like a fever dream. A fever dream where a woman is angrily demanding you grab her ass while announcing that she is coming.
Difficult to believe I know, but in the performance at the national final where this song got selected, she was actually wearing less. My mind was boggled.
This is even less subtle than Milkshake Man was. At one point the translation of the lyrics is “I am Erika, you’re full of stamina. Hit mе once again. Grab my ass”. If you say so.
13: 🇫🇮 Finland – Erika Vikman with 'Ich komme'
This is going to be great. It is, to be clear, lyrically absolutely filthy, and a monster of a song. It is also worth checking out after the contest what was a madly over the top collab with Käärijä, whose Cha Cha Cha really should have been the 2023 Eurovision winner. Watch this video later then thank me again etc etc …
Emily Mackay is looking forward to a dark showdown between these two acts coming up in a minute
For the essential Eurovision dark side it is shaping up to be a studded techno-goth face-off between Erika Vikman of Finland and Justyna Steczkowska of Poland in the next few songs. Vikman’s Ich Komme is good strutting, stompy fun, and it’s difficult, if not foolhardy, to argue with her flame-spitting microphone steed. Yet I have a soft spot for Steczkowska’s Gaja: it’s much harder, after all, to craft a thumping chorus out of ecological despair than out of pure smut. All those slavic stabs of synth, all that PVC, the fire: it’s a deliciously stern palate-cleanser. Extra points for the aerial work, too.
I say predictable, but it is quite difficult to predict which language is going to crop up next. I thought he struggled a bit with his vocals during the semi-final but it really seemed to bring the crowd with him, and honestly, this might be a good outside bet. It has grown on me.
12: 🇳🇱 Netherlands – Claude with 'C'est la vie'
This is another in a long line of Eurovision ballads that are heavily tipped in advance that I initially couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. It is my own personal blindspot. He seems like a lovely fella, but I found it a bit bland and predictable.
Here is Emily Mackay again
Coming up next is Claude’s C’est la vie for the Netherlands. For me it deftly combines chanson suavity and dancefloor pep. I also loved the psychoanalytic turn the staging takes when Claude starts dancing with his mirror-self inner child; drama, but make it classy.
I genuinely think if I had gone into listening to this blind and had to guess which country had sent this in, I would have said it was Ukraine leaning into folk history again. I like it – it has a bit of the melody of State of Independence about it? I think the thing that may count against it is that it is a bit more of a “vibe” than a hummable tune. The staging and costumes, despite being minimal, I really liked.
One of my children said “It is giving axolotl” which may or may not take some of the magic away.
11: 🇱🇻 Latvia – Tautumeitas with 'Bur man laimi'
Jumping out from behind a curtain in a minute are Tautumeitas, who are six women with a bit of a folklore coven feeling to them. The song translates to Bring Me Happiness, and the band, who have been together since 2015 try to make Latvian folk sounds accessible to a modern audience.
Just joking. Here are your Iceland boys.
✨✨✨ Cynical “uplifting” key change near the end! ✨✨✨
I can’t see this troubling the left-hand side of the scoreboard at all. But at least I have avoided comparing them to Jedward.
10: 🇮🇸 Iceland – Væb with 'Róa'
Brothers Matthías Davíð Matthíasson and Hálfdán Helgi Matthíasson have a couple of the least live blog friendly names in the contest this year, and are bringing us a kind of electronic sea shanty which sounds like it could have been a massive novelty hit in the late 1990s. Remember during Covid-19 and everybody started getting into sea shanties? Weird times.
✨✨✨ Abrupt genre change! ✨✨✨
I think this bit really makes it for me. I think this will get a top three finish tonight, and I’ve also added it to my all-time “Eurovision bangers” playlist where it is nestling very nicely alongside Nemo’s The Code, S10’s De Diepte and Gjon’s Tears Tout L’univers. I really want it to win.
9: 🇦🇹 Austria – JJ with 'Wasted Love'
Johannes Pietsch, that is JJ’s real name, is a genuine classical musician, and this is – assuming it goes well on the night – going to be a stunning technical vocal performance. It is my favourite from this year’s crop. You know it is a serious number because it is all moody and black and white.
Raise your glasses for Terry Wogan!
If you are watching in the UK, it has become tradition to raise a glass to the memory of Terry Wogan when song number nine hits. This is on the basis that he advised his successor Graham Norton not to have a drink up until that point.
Wogan provided television commentary for the BBC for every Eurovision song contest between 1980 and 2008, co-hosting the show itself in 1998 with Ulrika Jonsson.
He certainly commented on all my earliest memories of the show. I think the first Eurovision thing I remember is the UK’s selection show A Song for Europe 1981 in the March of that year, which he presented. God, I’m getting old. Anyway, cheers Terry! 🥂
Also, to be clear, this no early drinking rule has never applied to live bloggers, as may become apparent the further we get into the night.
My kids have remained distinctly unimpressed by this, insisting it is just a rehash of Katy Perry’s Last Friday Night, which it definitely is thematically, even if I can’t really hear any similarity in the actual tune itself.
8: 🇬🇧 UK – Remember Monday with 'What the Hell Just Happened?'
These girls can sing, don’t worry about that, but they were maybe slightly over exuberant in their semi-final performance. In advance I was somewhat worried that sending a group who make country-tinged music at a time when the new US administration has been stomping around insulting everybody in Europe left, right and centre might be ill-advised, but the song they’ve picked seems to channel Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now more than country music.
Emily Mackay’s verdict on the UK entry, which is up next, is here …
I find myself in the strange position of really, genuinely, rating the UK’s entry. Remember Monday’s cheese-Queen-by-way-of-Mika-and-Harry-Styles number has Sabrina Carpenter-esque poised and girlish wit without wackiness, piano and guitar pop classicism without posturing. Plus: good pyro, synchronised swimming, a chandelier, and a nod to Bucks Fizz in the tearaway skirts – self-torn, mind you; this is 2025 and de-skirting with agency.
I told you that Sandra Studer’s Eurovision song sounds like the Blake’s 7 theme.
I mentioned earlier that ahead of the contest I spoke to Ewan Spence of ESC Insight, a website and podcast that covers Eurovision all year round. One of the things I asked him was whether the fact that Sweden’s KAJ have dominated the YouTube streams of Eurovision songs this year would be a factor in possibly propelling them to victory.
“Yes, is the short answer,” he said. “One of the four things that the juries are looking for is commercial success, and they can see that it’s gone viral. They won’t want to be seen not awarding points to something that is proving to be a hit with the public.”
But, Ewan explained, the bigger impact is possibly on where songs ended up in the running order and how that order affects chances in the public vote – something Eurovision fans obsess over. He told me:
It is a producer led running order nowadays, so as not to put similar songs together. But it also allows you to stack the decks, so the ones that people are waiting for are going to be further down the order.
Songs that are doing well on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram and so on, they are more likely to be considered for those sweet spots in the running order.
It’s a small advantage, it’s a technical advantage, and it might not be picked up on, but yes, those numbers are going to influence decisions.
I love these blackout/mute drops at the end of this song.
If you check out singer Daniil Leshchynskyi’s Instagram, he always somehow looks like he is starring in a 1970s episode of Doctor Who as the doomed leader of a future Earth colony in space about to get invaded by Daleks.
7: 🇺🇦 Ukraine – Ziferblat with 'Bird of Pray'
This three-piece band coming up were once mentored by Verka Serduchka on Ukraine’s X-Factor, but I can’t really see that much of that Verka glam has rubbed off on them, and it was maybe slightly a surprise they qualified, as they hadn’t done well in the snap polling of fans after their dress rehearsal. Certainly, unlike the last couple of years, they don’t appear to be in contention for a win.
“We’re divas, you and I” she sings. You speak for yourself, Melody. During the course of this live blog I’ve only shouted out “fetch me more prosecco, right this instant!” at my family twice so far.
Does a hat being thrown away count as a ✨✨✨ Costume change! ✨✨✨ 🧐
6: 🇪🇸 Spain – Melody with 'Esa diva'
Spain’s annual “send a Eurovision entry without a hint of flamenco challenge” fails at the opening hurdle with this one. Melody is an established star in Spain, with six albums behind her, and had her first hit when she was ten. I have no idea if she is a diva in real-life.
Forty-four “Tavo!” shout-outs at the end there.
I really really enjoy this. It is genuinely the kind of thing I listen to most days. I don’t see it as being anything other than right-hand of the scoreboard fodder come the end of the evening, but it is always nice to get something miserable to punctuate all the glamour. My kids have been obsessed with criticising his haircut. I used to have one like that.
5: 🇱🇹 Lithuania – Katarsis with 'Tavo akys'
Next up, if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if somebody sent a song by The Cure to Eurovision then here is your answer, except instead of one of the jolly ones like The Love Cats or Friday I’m In Love, they’ve decided to send something from the miserable Pornography or Faith albums instead. Well, from somewhere in its vicinity at least.
You don’t get enough miserable gothy-emo-post-punk at Eurovision for me, and I didn’t expect this to get through from the semi-final, so it is a really pleasant surprise to see it here. I like this one.
✨✨✨ Unexpected French language in the bagging area! ✨✨✨
Verse two is basically the same as verse one mais cette fois en français.
4: 🇮🇱 Israel – Yuval Raphael with 'New Day Will Rise'
This is a fairly straightforward Eurovision power ballad. It is written by Keren Peles, who also co-wrote last year’s Israeli entry. Israel have previously won the competition four times, and I’m not sure this is going to sway enough wavering voters to make it a fifth time.
My lovely colleague Emily Mackay is also watching tonight, and here to chip in
So, hear me out: I’ve really got a lot of time for Estonia’s Tommy Cash and his Espresso Macchiato. I concede this may be rooted in awed admiration of the pure brass-necked s___housery of crudely cosplaying as another European country in your national entry (some Italians weren’t too happy, and with lines like “sweating like a mafioso”, perhaps you can see why). But it’s hooky in the same remorseless, bludgeoning manner as Sweden’s Bara Bada Bastu, and the boy’s got moves, in a dissolving-Tiny-Tim kind of way. Anyway, any Charli xcx collaborator who rhymes “espresso” with “no need to be depresso” is OK by me.
I have taken to sarcastically saying “No stresso, no stresso, no need to be depresso” when people are cross with me about missing my copy filing deadlines here at the Guardian. It’s going down great.
3: 🇪🇪 Estonia – Tommy Cash with 'Espresso Macchiato'
Rather like San Marino this year, Estonia have taken the odd decision to send a song that seems to be all about Italy and Italian culture. This feels like this year’s enjoyable novelty that for sure adds joy to the final, but is not really a contender, especially coming so early. It might end up splitting the votes among the more quirky entries. He has been very funny off-stage, and his bendy legged dancing is something to behold.
✨✨✨ Costume change! ✨✨✨
I do really like this, but her vocals were maybe not strong enough in the semi-final to do it justice. There is also a weirder darker more electronic version of it she recorded which whispers I prefer. Scroll back and check it out later, then thank you.
I suspect that opening sequence deserves our first …
✨✨✨ Performance designed to look great on TV looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨
… of the night, as I assume she was just lying on the floor rather than in a doll’s house there for the opening sequence.
2: 🇱🇺 Luxembourg – Laura Thorn with 'La poupée monte le son'
On the face of it the next song seems to be about rejecting a manipulative partner, and translates to “The doll/puppet turns up the sound/volume”, but it has been structured to be a retort to Luxembourg’s 1965 Eurovision winner Poupée de cire, poupée de son. You might have got a glimpse of France Gall singing that on the TV in basckground.
This newly empowered doll story has a bit of an eighties Hi-NRG vibe to it which should go down well in the arena, but as we all know by now, no country that has performed out of the cursed second spot in the running order of the final has ever won the contest at all, which is a shame as I would like to see this one do well.
And we are off …
✨✨✨ Someone presses the button to make fire appear on stage! ✨✨✨
1: 🇳🇴 Norway – Kyle Alessandro with 'Lighter'
There is more than one entry this year that seems to have listened to Olly Alexander’s Dizzy from last year, saw that it achieved very little in terms of points, and then decided “We’ll have ourselves a bit of that for 2025” regardless. On the recorded version the vocals are autotuned to the point of setting my teeth on edge because I’m an old-fashioned soul, so it has been interesting to see how Kyle Alessandro performs in the arena. He is no stranger to television, having competed in Norway’s Got Talent at the age of ten. They often pick an uptempo number to open the show and get the arena on its feet.
I’m not saying I am old-fashioned, but the flag parade was added in 2013, and I still consider it an unwelcome innovation. Possibly I am just scarred from live blogging Olympic opening ceremonies. At least there are only 26 finalists so it won’t last an hour. Swiss legends Yello are providing the soundtrack with The Race.
We are starting with Nemo reprising last year’s winner, The Code, which is in, IMHO, an all-time Eurovision banger. And they are looking fabulous.
I am just going to tip you off that I think there is about 18 minutes of preamble until we get to the first song.
Let the Eurovision Song Contest begin …
Hello! The 69th Eurovision song contest is beginning in Basel.
I am here to be your second-screen companion with some extra facts, jokes, pictures, witty observations, 80’s pop references, and moaning that Milkshake Man didn’t qualify. Here’s the deal …
Who is presenting tonight? Hazel Brugger, Sandra Studer and Michelle Hunziker. Find out more here
How does voting work at Eurovision 2025? I’ve got you covered with this explainer
What should be on your bingo card? Here are my suggestions
How does this live blog work? It is essentially just me chatting along with Eurovision while hosting a small family watch party and drinking too much prosecco
Why is Australia’s Milkshake Man not going to be on? Because life is unfair
The ones that got away: 🇦🇺 Australia and 🇮🇪 Ireland
Every year there are a couple of songs I think are absolute bangers which will make the final more fun but then inexplicably get binned off in the semi-finals when the whole of Europe fails to agree with me. Booooooooo! This year, those honours belong to Australia and Ireland.
Ireland’s entry was Laika Party by Emmy. Fun Laika fact: she was a stray dog picked up off the streets and hurtled into space by the Soviet Union, the first dog in space. Less fun Laika fact: she overheated and died during the flight 🐾
So it did seem like an odd choice of subject matter for an uplifting club number, but Emmy was imagining what if she survived and was still having a party in the sky. Rather than being horribly killed in what, at that point, was essentially an experiment in weapon technology.
Anyway, put that aside, Emmy was also wearing an incredible sixties-style bacofoil space dress that needed another outing.
Here is the real Laika by the way, bless her little paws.
Meanwhile – HOW IS MILKSHAKE MAN NOT IN THE FINAL? My Australian brothers and sisters, this has been a travesty, and I apologise on Europe’s behalf. If you haven’t been following the build up to the contest, please devote three minutes to watching this video and wondering what could have been …
I spoke to Ewan Spence of ESC Insight, a website and podcast that covers Eurovision all year round, to see what he thought the chances might be for the UK entry, Remember Monday. He wasn’t that optimistic, suggesting that he saw a pretty low ceiling for them.
I think, with a bit of luck, we could get between tenth and fifteenth on the jury with a really good following wind. The team will be looking at 30-50 points from the jury, and then anything from 25 down to zero from the televote. I’d love to see them break 100 points, but I don’t think it will.
The problem the song has is the tempo breaks. Every time it comes up to the payoff lyric, it slams the anchors on, and brings the tempo right back to zero. Then it has to build it up again.
So the song feels like it stops four times, and it feels like it’s stopping right at the point where you’re about to sell it, finally, to the audience. I don’t think it works competitively on the first listen.
Here are some of the pictures of fans gathered in Basel for tonight’s show …
Occasionally I see people on social media say this blog has been a bit sneery about the contest, which I find hilarious, as I absolutely 100% unashamedly love Eurovision and doing this coverage is always one of the highlights of my year.
But I did put my “negative Nancy” hat on earlier this week – see several Is Doctor Who really dead this time? articles passim – expressing my concerns that the increased demand for social media content from Eurovision artists is forcing countries to choose blander options who can better trusted not to go off-piste or exposed as a one trick pony during the lengthy campaigning season.
You can read that right old moan-up here – but it does have some great videos embedded in it so is worth scrolling through for Go_A’s deadpan cover of fellow Ukrainian Eurovision legendary entry Verka Serduchka’s Dancing Lasha Tumbai alone.
One thing I always find invaluable, and you might enjoy reading too, is the ESC Insight Eurovision guidebook, which is aimed at fans and media commentators and is full of interesting things about the acts and the songs. This year it has been put together by Samantha Ross, and you can find a free downloadable pdf of it here.
Talking of our hosts, long term Eurovision watchers will know that the skits and intervals can veer between joyful camp fun and excruciating awkwardness. A bit like a night out with me, I guess. We got some of both during the semi-finals. If you fancy something to get you in the mood, the first semi-final featured this musical number, Made In Switzerland, which was definitely fun, and had a little bit of political bite in some of the lyrics along the way …
Who is hosting the contest tonight?
Thanks to Nemo’s victory last year, this is Switzerland’s third crack at hosting Eurovision, having hosted the inaugural event in Lugano in 1956 and then hosted in Lausanne in 1989 after perennial trivia question answer Céline Dion won for the country the year before.
Tonight we are in Basel, and we have three co-hosts. If you watched the semi-finals you will already be familiar with Hazel Brugger and Sandra Studer.
Performing under the stage name Sandra Simó, Studer was Switzerland’s entry in 1991 with Canzone Per Te, with a hairdo that is giving me flashbacks to what everybody looked like when I was taking my A-levels, and a chorus weirdly reminiscent of the Blake’s 7 theme tune.
Brugger is a US-Swiss comedian and television presenter, who has already given us some incredibly weird and memorable moments during the semi-finals, including crowd-surfing, and showing off her weird tongue trick to Estonia’s Tommy Cash in an interview that made him look like the normal one. She has been like a ball of unpredictable chaotic energy running through the show so far, and I am 100% here for it.
Television presenter and model Michelle Hunziker will be joining them tonight.
Earlier this week Angelica Frey ran her rule over this year’s entries and picked her top ten. She wrote it before the semi-finals so worth noting that, while we do not see eye to eye on Spain’s entry, I approve of the fact that her top ten included at least one song that has fallen at the first hurdle which I think deserved a place tonight.
Your Eurovision 2025 bingo card suggestions!
No Eurovision live blog is complete without some bingo card suggestions. Of course, if you want to have a shot of drink each time you spot one of these things, you are welcome, but drinking is not compulsory. Instead you can just shout out “What the hell just happened?” or “Serving kant!” or whatever floats your particular boat. But not “When I say, ‘Sweet, sweet’, you say, ‘Yum, yum’” because that did not qualify. *shakes fist at sky again*
Here are my suggestions …
✨✨✨ Costume change! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Performance designed to look great on TV looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Unexpected French language in the bagging area! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ An artist’s dog appears! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Man plays three instruments in one song, but one of the instruments is rubbish ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ A painfully high note is delivered! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Abrupt genre change! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Someone presses the button to make fire appear on stage! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Twelve points from Cyprus to Greece! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Oversized instruments! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ A bald man joins in halfway through and ruins a song! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ You’re live blogger makes a typo! [THAT’S THE JOKE] ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Cynical “uplifting” key change near the end! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ The wind machine is activated! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Guitar shreddage! 🎸 ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Inexplicable mask! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ The boys are bare-chested again! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ An overlong pause delivering the “Douze points” when we are already running behind! ✨✨✨
✨✨✨ Sophie Ellis-Bexter klaxon ✨✨✨
Just to clue you in on how tonight is going to run. I’m not in Basel, I think it would be far too tricky, for me at least, to do the live blog actually from inside the arena. Plus nobody at the Guardian wanted to pay for me to go. Boooooooo!
I’m in London, and I will be watching Eurovision on the television while hosting a small family watch party. I will also desperately be trying not to make the same jokes as Graham Norton on the BBC’s coverage.
With me are my younger sister, who is a huge Eurovision fan, but also a massive spoilerphobe, so she has heard NONE of this year’s songs yet, so I am looking forward to seeing her reactions. Her son, who studies performing arts, is here too, as are my two kids, who are 12 and 15 and have been shamelessly indoctrinated into all things Eurovision since birth. I’ve printed out our own bingo and scorecards already.
But the most important component is YOU, the reader. I hope to add a little extra sparkle to your evening, and do feel free to email me your thoughts to martin.belam@theguardian.com as we go along, and I might feature some of them in the blog. Pictures of pets watching the show are always appreciated. If you put EUROVISION as the subject line that would be a great help, thank you.
One of the other controversies in the buildup to tonight’s grand final has been the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decision to allow Israel to participate, despite calls for them to be excluded.
I’m going to do what I did last year, and follow the same procedure I do when covering events like the Olympics – once the organising bodies have made their decision about who can participate, we cover the event as is, so we’ll treat Yuval Raphael and Israel’s song and staging like any other entry tonight.
As I said last year, I am aware that some Guardian readers and regular Eurovision live blog followers will be glad to keep the music and the politics separate – but I am also aware that some of you will find that disappointing, and think it is the wrong decision.
You can find all of the Guardian’s ongoing coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here.
If you have been following the buildup to this year’s contest you will not have been able to avoid the controversy over whether Malta’s Miriana Conte was allowed to sing the words “serving kant” or not. Spoilers: she is not. Our European culture editor Philip Oltermann had this look at the history of smutty numbers on the Eurovision stage.
A couple of years ago the people on our culture desk forced Alexis Petridis to rank every single winner up to that point – all 69 of them because of the weird four-way tie that happened once.
It doesn’t include the last two winners. I imagine Loreen’s Tattoo might have nestled somewhere in the 20s, and that last year’s winner, The Code by Nemo, would have been in the top ten.
How does voting work at Eurovision 2025?
Are you new to Eurovision? Probably not if you are already reading my live blog. But here is the lowdown on how the voting works tonight.
Every competing country in the contest – that is all 37 who initially entered, not just those appearing in the final – have both a jury awarding votes, and a public telephone vote. There is also an additional “rest of the world” aggregated telephone vote.
Once voting closes, each country reveals who has received a maximum 12 points from their country’s jury. Points are awarded as follows: 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
This is the bit where we go from country to country and everybody says “Great show, Basel, you really blew our minds” and then takes far too long to deliver the actual score, causing the show to inevitably run behind schedule.
After that procedure, we then get the public vote added to each song one by one, starting with the song placed last by the juries. That usually builds up to a tight climax where three or four songs leapfrog into the lead and then there is some suspense … and then Sweden almost certainly wins (probably).
Salut! Hello! Hallå! Привіт! ¡Hola! Ahoj! Γειά σου!
Bonsoir et bienvenue à la couverture en direct du 69e Eurovision par le Guardian.
That is about as much French as I can manage which may be a little tricky tonight as Switzerland is sure to serve up some multi-lingual hosting this evening.
There is going to be a lot to enjoy tonight, even if a couple of the things I really liked got knocked out at the semi-final stage *shakes fist at sky*. More on that later.
It is Martin Belam here with you tonight. It is the fourth time I’ve done it now, and I’ve possibly got the hang of it, although the chaotic third act of me trying to live blog the results coming in when I’ve had too much prosecco is surely going to reappear.
The show starts at 9pm CEST, 8pm BST, and I will be with you every step of the way as your second-screen guide. You can get in touch with me at martin.belam@theguardian.com – and if you put EUROVISION as the subject line your email will be easier to find.
