On Saturday, 13 May, the Grand Final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Liverpool and will be hosted on behalf of last year’s Ukrainian winners, Kalush Orchestra, who will open the show. The theme for the 67th edition ‘United by Music’ is the power of music to bring together different communities and countries.
During this internationally televised song writing competition, organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the 26 finalists from primarily European countries will each perform an original song selected at an earlier round via a national competition. After the performances, each country will award points to their favourite songs. The artist or band having received the most points wins the competition and is welcomed again on stage to perform once more. Moreover, the winners receive the chance to host the following year’s competition.
This famous multi show spectacular, which is based on the Italian Sanremo Music Festival, began as a technical experiment in live, simultaneous, transnational TV broadcasting and dates back to the 1960s. In its first edition held on 24 May 1956, only seven European nations competed against each other. Since then, the format has evolved into the biggest music competition in the world involving a great number of participating countries and attracting millions of viewers.
If you want to learn more about the Eurovision Song Contest or train your interpreting skills in the field of media vocabulary, we invite you to check out our Audiovisual and Media section where you can find speeches about this music event as well as many other related topics.