Welcome To The Wonder
Is this your first time following the Eurovision Song Contest? Have you heard Eurovision chat ramping up again and wanted to know what all the fuss was about? Looking forward to a Eurovision party and wanting to come prepared?
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there before! Every edition of the Eurovision Song Contest is somebody’s first time watching the show. Here’s all the information you need to know what’s happening for the upcoming continental musical festivities!
When is the Eurovision Song Contest on?
The Eurovision Song Contest takes place over three shows, two Semi Finals in the middle of the Week, and the Grand Final on Saturday night. The Semi Finals will take place on May 10th and May 12th followed by the main Grand Final show on May 14th. All shows start at 9 pm Central European Time (CET) with both Semi Finals running until about 11 pm CET, and the Grand Final going until about 1 am CET on Sunday morning.
Why Are There Semi Finals?
Because the Song Contest is such a popular TV show for countries’ broadcasters to be part of, the EBU hold Semi Finals to whittle down the number of participating songs to make for a slightly more manageable Saturday night show – even at that it still runs around the four hour mark!
The songs from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom are given automatic qualification through to the Grand Final. These countries are colloquially known as “The Big Five” given both their contributions to the EBU as a whole, and the viewing numbers they can bring in on a Saturday night.
The host country is also given an automatic qualification, but with Italy hosting, that ticket is no longer needed, so we have 25 countries in the Grand Final rather than the usual 26.
The remaining songs (35 for Turin 2022) compete in the two Semi Finals. The top 10 from each Semi Final will qualify for Saturday night’s Grand Final whilst those that fail to qualify will remain in our memories and on countless playlists.
Who Enters The Eurovision Song Contest?
Broadcasters who are full members of the European Broadcasting Association (the EBU) are eligible to enter a song into the Contest; although this is limited to one broadcaster per country and the EBU’s “lead broadcaster” in a country gets first refusal.
You can be a full member of the EBU if any part of your country fits in a geographical box as defined by the EBU. It has nothing to do with any physical national borders or political groupings such as the European Union. If even one pebble of your country is inside that box, a broadcaster can enter.
As for Austrlia, broadcaster SBS is an associate member of the EBU (as are many international broadcasters), and the EBU specifically invited Australia to enter the Contest in 2015, and that invitation has been extended into 2023’s Contest.
This year, the national broadcasters of 40 countries have entered. They are from (deep breath) Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, The Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
How can I watch the Eurovision Song Contest?
If you live in one of the countries which feature in this year’s Contest, you’ll be able to watch the Song Contest on the broadcaster’s channel; many broadcasters also offer online streaming so you may be able to go online and watch it there.
Outside of the EBU members, the Contest does stream on the official YouTube chanel (youtube.com/eurovision), although where a national broadcaster can stream the show YouTube may be restricted… for example in the United Kingdom you’ll need to use the BBC iPlayer rather than YouTube to watch online.
This year has another option. With the Song Contest’s partnership with TikTok, the whole show will also be streamed on the video=-based social media app… although how the Contest is going to cope with the portrait format is going to be entertaining.
In the next part of Explaining Eurovision, we’ll take a closer look at how the Eurovision songs are selected, what you can and can’t do with a song, and what you can do with the performance.