Every Eurovision Song Contest fan knows the thrill of that first listen. The moment a new entry drops or a National Final longlist appears, and your ears immediately begin the search for the winner. But after the last song is revealed, and the credits roll on Festival da Canção, it prompts the start of a quieter, subtler, yet deeply rewarding time in the Eurovision calendar—the mid-season.
A Moment to Reflect, Not Just Predict
This is the space between the storm and the spectacle. The time when the glitz of selection shows gives way to something more reflective—and, in many ways, more meaningful. For many of us, the songs go beyond a first listen. Some of us will have heard the Eurovision songs a dozen times by now – and there might be some we’ve heard a dozen dozen times. We know every word, every dance routine, every wink to the camera.
For somebody like me, unsurprisingly, I obsess about the Song Contest, about winning, qualifying, the running order, and more. But this month, there’s a lull without winners and losers each Saturday evening, and I can finally engage another side of my brain.
The mid-season, from when the Swedish snow melts in March until the Swedish sun burns in May, is about more than competition. It’s about context. It’s about the art.
Here, we dig into the stories behind the songs. We learn that a banger isn’t just a bop but a catharsis from heartbreak. That a ballad isn’t merely beautiful—it’s an autobiographical part two to an emotional story. The artists, once just names in a line-up, become real people—with perspectives, humour, backstories, and reasons to love them. We see them not just as contestants but as individuals excited for the most significant moment of their careers. It’s heartwarming when you see them hanging out with each other on Instagram live streams, and witnessing their journey into the Eurovision community, which should be the most welcoming there is.
The Power of the Pre-Parties
The pre-party scene helps so much with this. These events enable the acts to do more than perform or meet the press in interviews that feel like speed dating. They’re also about community, as much a fandom reunion as they are a promo opportunity, and about the very real connections made between artists and everyone following the road to Basel.
Yes, the audience in London screamed and giggled with delight as Sissal, JJ, Go-Jo, and Marko Bošnjak saddled yoga balls alongside Miriana as he reached the climax of ‘Serving’. But it represents something else, something bigger. There’s a friendship and a trust and a joy for the community that makes these pre-parties something more than just a show or a concert – they are a celebration.
In fact, within the nerves that certainly lie before them in Switzerland, it’s so refreshing and healthy that the pre-parties aren’t simply an exercise in preparing for competition. I remember last year suggesting to others in the press bubble that even the pre-parties could be “audience polled,” just like we do at the Eurovision rehearsals. Quite rightly, I was told that was completely inappropriate. Yes, some analyse and over-analyse every live performance, but these occasions are for doing Eurovision without the pressure. And it should remain that way —a chance to meet some of the Contest’s most hardcore fans in our little safe space of joy, free from precision staging and the millions of prospective voters to impress.
A Community Bursting with Creativity
What I also love about this season is how much content our Eurovision community creates for our own pleasure. This has grown immensely since I started following the Contest on the simple phpbb-driven text forums in the late noughties. Those incredible views on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok that the official EBU channels rightly boast about are far from the only content being produced. I’ve mentioned Overthinking It before on ESC Insight, but I must confess it’s content like this, giving depth to each entry so that three minutes of superfluous pop means so much more, that keeps me coming back year after year.
This time period is also when our community gets most creative. I’m thinking of stuff like Europops and piano covers, reaction videos, and lyric translations. Each piece of content we create helps generate precisely the right kind of buzz that makes the Song Contest unique. I know I’m not alone in the Eurovision community in calling out how heartless and cruel people can be behind a computer screen, but when we get it right, there is no community better than ours.
The World Behind The Songs and Artists
And our favourite artists – basking in the glory of new followers they’re gaining from Lisadell to Latvia – are embracing every newly found fan along the way. I love how many of the class of 2025 are featured in the “A Little Bit More” series on YouTube, giving artists space to experiment, reinterpret, or bare themselves acoustically.
You realise how much artistry lives beyond the LED screens. And you fall in love with the songs anew. You also find an atmosphere full of (ahem) love, love, peace, peace – before we get to the cutthroat battleground we’ll witness in a few weeks time.
There’s always space for the competition to weave an undercurrent into this window of time, but an undercurrent it should remain. There are many ways to win at the Eurovision Song Contest without winning the Eurovision Song Contest. This mid-season stretch reminds us that Eurovision isn’t just a night in May. It’s a world. And these few special weeks make the Song Contest more than just 30-odd songs gunning for victory, but a myriad of stories, art, wonder, and community that transforms surface-level entertainment into something we all put our hearts on the line for when ‘Te Deum‘ strikes in May.