Chaos Navigator
2025 Eurovision Party!
What is Eurovision?
Eurovision is the largest and longest-held song contest in the world. Starting in 1954 to promote peace and cultural exchange after WWII, Eurovision has been held every year since. (except 2020 of course).​ Each participating country sends a song to the competition, which is then performed live on stage. There are a few performances during "Eurovision Week", starting with the jury rehearsal, Semifinal #1 (half the songs perform), Semifinal #2 (the other half perform), then the Finals. Winners of the semifinals + the "Big Five" are sent to the finals. The song chosen from each country is revamped, choreographed and promoted for Eurovision. Now that all of the songs and artists have been chosen, they are going to parties, performing across Europe, and staging their songs. Once a song is performed in the jury rehearsal, it cannot be changed. At the end of the competition, the song with the most points wins Eurovision, and their country hosts next year's competition! This year Switzerland is hosting in Basel. (Oh that's why this is all fondue)
How Do You Win?
There are two components to scoring: The Jury Vote and the Popular (Tele) Vote. Each country's jury ranks their favorites, giving 12 points to their favorite, then 10, and 8-1 to the next best. The jury rankings are then revealed country by country. Popular Vote ranking is also by country. The 12, 10, 8-1 scores are given to the favorites from each country. There is also a combined "The rest of the world" Popular vote that all non-participating country citizens vote in. In both jury and popular vote, you cannot vote for your own country. Stereotypes and Drama abound in the scores! This is international politics! There are so many voting scandals and so many handshake votes it's laughably predictable at times. YES Greece and Cyprus will give each other 12 jury points no matter what! And YES Finland ALWAYS gives 12 popular points to the metal song. The power ballad ladies of Eastern Europe WILL be nearly identical, and NO ONE wants to travel to Australia, so they'll never win.... but that's why we love Eurovision!
Who Participates?
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) basically asks for money from participating countries who have a broadcasting partner in good standing. If your country wants to join, they join the EBU, pay up, meet the freedom of the press standards, and BOOM you're in. So that's how those famous European countries of... Australia and Azerbaijan got in. The 5 countries that pay the most money (The Big 5) are automatically in the final. They're almost always Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK. Each country decides on their own how to select their song. Some countries just ask an artist and they're in. Some host a one-night special reminiscent of 1980's late night PBS. Others hold 5-month-long X-Factor televised contests that bankrupt the budget and put their participation in the finals in jeopardy. I still haven't figured out exactly how Italy does it, but it's really fancy. I recommend looking at some of the smaller country finalists... they can be quite the... uh... spectacle. Also I'm pretty sure they would NEVER let the USA join.
