Five years ago, I wrote an article reflecting on the lost Song Contest of 2020 as the ‘Contest of the Racial Watershed’. It was written in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd, in a period when there was significant quantities of anger, remorse, reflection and promises to do better all over social media. Five years on, as the Eurovision Song Contest finally celebrates its third Person of Colour winner, it’s time to ask ourselves as a community an awkward question… have things actually gotten better?
The Numbers Behind The Entries
There are many ways to analyse the data on PoC participation at the contest (see footnote at bottom for full details), the first being that the number of PoC participants at the Eurovision Song Contest is on a downward trend (from eleven in 2021 down to two in 2025). That said, we also have two Song Contest winners in this group and the fact that of the eight of these artists that had to qualify through the Semi Finals based on televote alone (assuming 2022 was also a televote-only year), six still managed to qualify.
The metric I’m most interested in, however, for understanding if the televote at the Contest has an unconscious bias towards race, is whether each artist’s televote score outperforms their jury score in the Grand Final. Of the eleven artists showcased here who took part in the Grand Final, only three scored higher with the televote than the jury (and of those three, only Marina Satti in 2024 did so by more than ten points). This suggests that jurors are more likely to allocate points to PoC artists than televoters and whilst there could be a variety of factors for this, televoter unconscious bias is definitely a factor to consider.
However, this data alone is not enough to draw any solid conclusions from. So it’s vital to offer a series of very important asterisks to my statements from the previous paragraph. Firstly, I am using the term PoC in this article, where I used BAME in my earlier articles and where ‘global majority’ is also a widely used term. Different people will have different feelings about the terminology and which terms are most appropriate and which terms they feel most comfortable using.
As a British-Asian man, I am less interested in the precise words that we use to describe non-white people and find that it’s precisely the constantly shifting terminology that means we have more conversations about which words to use rather than actually talking about combating the original problem. Readers, you will have your own opinion regarding the best terminology; unless that terminology is specifically offensive to an ethnic minority, all opinions are valid.
Secondly, PoC is a massive umbrella under which human beings can be put. Within the group of artists identified in this article are people of Latina heritage, Central Asian heritage, Black heritage, Filipino heritage, North African heritage, Aboriginal heritage and Arab heritage. Within the group, there are a variety of different skin tones. Although all listed demographics are likely to be subject to racial prejudice, that’s not to say that all listed artists have or haven’t been subject to it over the course of their Eurovision campaign.
This list is also by no means a definitive list, and the reality is that there are plenty of participating artists from the last five years who people might also be biased against as a result of their cultural (but not necessarily racial) background. It’s worth noting that by my logic of considering patterns where a certain demographic scores lower with the televote than the jury vote, there’s a number of ethnic groups who could claim they are biased against by the Eurovision televote.
Finally, I think it’s important to be transparent about the fact that I am British/Sri Lankan, with my racial background being mixed White/Asian. As somebody who lives in Scotland and works in a white-majority industry, I am painfully experienced in recognising racism and unconscious bias in everyday life. Whilst my skin is darker than many other people of colour, it is also lighter than many. There is data that exists (at least in a UK context) which suggests that black people are more discriminated against than other ethnic minorities. There are, therefore, people who exist who will disagree with my ability to discuss racism as a result of not experiencing it as much as people with a darker skin tone.
In the context of Eurovision 2025, people may point to this fact in arguing that Claude is more likely to experience racism than JJ. Unfortunately, unconscious bias is a scale rather than a binary choice. These biases develop in people based on the culture they exist in, and it’s impossible to tell if there were televoters who specifically chose not to vote for Claude as a result of his skin colour (remember – televoters can only vote for songs they like rather than against songs they dislike). Conversely, it is impossible to tell whether televoters choosing to vote for JJ did so because his skin was “light enough” (especially given his entire performance was screened in a black and white filter). The fact is that as a person of colour, you will almost certainly deal with racism in your everyday life, and to quantify some people’s racism as being easier or harder than others is precisely the sort of divisive rhetoric that means in 2025 we’re still having the same conversations about skin colour and prejudice.
The Eurovision Community
In the last five years, I’ve been lucky enough to attend four fantastic Song Contests and a number of other National Finals and Eurovision events, becoming much better acquainted with so many members of our wonderful community from all over the world. The reality is that even within the Eurovision fan community, the significant majority of fans who are visible at these events are white. Whilst I have generally felt welcomed in this community regardless of my background, my difference follows me around and it will do so until I see greater representation by people of colour at Eurovision events, covering the Contest as press, on fan club committees and of course, on the stage itself.
The Eurovision Song Contest is one huge cultural mirror to the European continent. In the same way that unconscious bias exists in European society, this is likely reflected in the televote scores at the Song Contest.
How do we change that? One conversation at a time. One shutting down a racially-tinged joke made by a friend at a time. One polite explanation to somebody who doesn’t understand at a time. It’s unlikely that racism will ever be gone for good, but we will slowly recognise when racial diversity becomes a celebrated asset of society. More likely than not, when the artists, fans and press become representative of the world we live in, the Eurovision Song Contest will be one of the first places we see that progress.
Footnote
Eight of the ten PoC artists who made up the class of 2020 had been invited back for 2021. Of those artists, Benny Cristo (Czechia), Montaigne (Australia) & Vincent Bueno (Austria) were knocked out in their respective Semi Finals, whilst Destiny (Malta), Eden Alene (Israel), Efendi (Azerbaijan) Jeangu Macrooy (The Netherlands) & Senhit (San Marino) competed in the Grand Final alongside Barabra Pravi (France), Manizha (Russia) & Tusse (Sweden).
Of the acts who were knocked out in the Semi Final, Montaigne came 14th of 16 in the first Semi Final scoring 2 points with the televote (16th of 16) whilst Vincent Bueno and Benny Cristo came 12th & 15th scoring 13 (15th of 17) and 0 (17th of 17) points with the televote respectively. In the Grand Final, France managed an impressive second place whilst Russia secured a top 10 finish but the results for the PoC artists were otherwise disappoint as Tusse came 14th, Eden came 17th, Efendi came 20th, San Marino came 22nd and perhaps most disappointingly, The Netherlands came 23rd. Sweden scored significantly more televote points than jury points whilst France and Azerbaijan scored almost equally with both but the other five artists significantly under-performed with the televote in comparison to their jury numbers.
Having eleven PoC artists competing at Eurovision was an impressive milestone in Eurovision history and it’s clear from the years since that it’s not likely to be repeated. In 2022, we had PoC representation from Chanel (Spain), Jérémie Makiese (Belgium), Mahmood (Italy), Malik Harris (Germany) & Sheldon Riley (Australia). In 2023, we had PoC representation from La Zarra (France) and Loreen (Sweden). In 2024 we had Zaachariaha from Electric Fields (Australia), Marina Satti (Greece), Saba (Denmark) & Slimane (France). And finally in 2025, we had PoC representation from Claude (The Netherlands) & JJ (Austria).