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One thing I always find invaluable, and you might enjoy reading too, is the ESC Insight Eurovision guidebook, which is aimed at fans and media commentators and is full of interesting things about the acts and the songs. This year it has been put together by Samantha Ross, and you can find a free downloadable pdf of it here.
Talking of our hosts, long term Eurovision watchers will know that the skits and intervals can veer between joyful camp fun and excruciating awkwardness. A bit like a night out with me, I guess. We got some of both during the semi-finals. If you fancy something to get you in the mood, the first semi-final featured this musical number, Made In Switzerland, which was definitely fun, and had a little bit of political bite in some of the lyrics along the way …
Who is hosting the contest tonight?
Thanks to Nemo’s victory last year, this is Switzerland’s third crack at hosting Eurovision, having hosted the inaugural event in Lugano in 1956 and then hosted in Lausanne in 1989 after perennial trivia question answer Céline Dion won for the country the year before.
Tonight we are in Basel, and we have three co-hosts. If you watched the semi-finals you will already be familiar with Hazel Brugger and Sandra Studer.
Performing under the stage name Sandra Simó, Studer was Switzerland’s entry in 1991 with Canzone Per Te, with a hairdo that is giving me flashbacks to what everybody looked like when I was taking my A-levels, and a chorus weirdly reminiscent of the Blake’s 7 theme tune.
Brugger is a US-Swiss comedian and television presenter, who has already given us some incredibly weird and memorable moments during the semi-finals, including crowd-surfing, and showing off her weird tongue trick to Estonia’s Tommy Cash in an interview that made him look like the normal one. She has been like a ball of unpredictable chaotic energy running through the show so far, and I am 100% here for it.
Television presenter and model Michelle Hunziker will be joining them tonight.
Earlier this week Angelica Frey ran her rule over this year’s entries and picked her top ten. She wrote it before the semi-finals so worth noting that, while we do not see eye to eye on Spain’s entry, I approve of the fact that her top ten included at least one song that has fallen at the first hurdle which I think deserved a place tonight.
Your Eurovision 2025 bingo card suggestions!
No Eurovision live blog is complete without some bingo card suggestions. Of course, if you want to have a shot of drink each time you spot one of these things, you are welcome, but drinking is not compulsory. Instead you can just shout out “What the hell just happened?” or “Serving kant!” or whatever floats your particular boat. But not “When I say, ‘Sweet, sweet’, you say, ‘Yum, yum’” because that did not qualify. *shakes fist at sky again*
Here are my suggestions …
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✨✨✨ Costume change! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Performance designed to look great on TV looks terrible in the hall! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Unexpected French language in the bagging area! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ An artist’s dog appears! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Man plays three instruments in one song, but one of the instruments is rubbish ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A painfully high note is delivered! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Abrupt genre change! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Someone presses the button to make fire appear on stage! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Twelve points from Cyprus to Greece! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Oversized instruments! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ A bald man joins in halfway through and ruins a song! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ You’re live blogger makes a typo! [THAT’S THE JOKE] ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Cynical “uplifting” key change near the end! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ The wind machine is activated! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Guitar shreddage! 🎸 ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Inexplicable mask! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ The boys are bare-chested again! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ An overlong pause delivering the “Douze points” when we are already running behind! ✨✨✨
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✨✨✨ Sophie Ellis-Bexter klaxon ✨✨✨
Just to clue you in on how tonight is going to run. I’m not in Basel, I think it would be far too tricky, for me at least, to do the live blog actually from inside the arena. Plus nobody at the Guardian wanted to pay for me to go. Boooooooo!
I’m in London, and I will be watching Eurovision on the television while hosting a small family watch party. I will also desperately be trying not to make the same jokes as Graham Norton on the BBC’s coverage.
With me are my younger sister, who is a huge Eurovision fan, but also a massive spoilerphobe, so she has heard NONE of this year’s songs yet, so I am looking forward to seeing her reactions. Her son, who studies performing arts, is here too, as are my two kids, who are 12 and 15 and have been shamelessly indoctrinated into all things Eurovision since birth. I’ve printed out our own bingo and scorecards already.
But the most important component is YOU, the reader. I hope to add a little extra sparkle to your evening, and do feel free to email me your thoughts to [email protected] as we go along, and I might feature some of them in the blog. Pictures of pets watching the show are always appreciated. If you put EUROVISION as the subject line that would be a great help, thank you.
One of the other controversies in the buildup to tonight’s grand final has been the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decision to allow Israel to participate, despite calls for them to be excluded.
I’m going to do what I did last year, and follow the same procedure I do when covering events like the Olympics – once the organising bodies have made their decision about who can participate, we cover the event as is, so we’ll treat Yuval Raphael and Israel’s song and staging like any other entry tonight.
As I said last year, I am aware that some Guardian readers and regular Eurovision live blog followers will be glad to keep the music and the politics separate – but I am also aware that some of you will find that disappointing, and think it is the wrong decision.
You can find all of the Guardian’s ongoing coverage of the Israel-Gaza war here.
If you have been following the buildup to this year’s contest you will not have been able to avoid the controversy over whether Malta’s Miriana Conte was allowed to sing the words “serving kant” or not. Spoilers: she is not. Our European culture editor Philip Oltermann had this look at the history of smutty numbers on the Eurovision stage.
A couple of years ago the people on our culture desk forced Alexis Petridis to rank every single winner up to that point – all 69 of them because of the weird four-way tie that happened once.
It doesn’t include the last two winners. I imagine Loreen’s Tattoo might have nestled somewhere in the 20s, and that last year’s winner, The Code by Nemo, would have been in the top ten.
How does voting work at Eurovision 2025?
Are you new to Eurovision? Probably not if you are already reading my live blog. But here is the lowdown on how the voting works tonight.
Every competing country in the contest – that is all 37 who initially entered, not just those appearing in the final – have both a jury awarding votes, and a public telephone vote. There is also an additional “rest of the world” aggregated telephone vote.
Once voting closes, each country reveals who has received a maximum 12 points from their country’s jury. Points are awarded as follows: 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
This is the bit where we go from country to country and everybody says “Great show, Basel, you really blew our minds” and then takes far too long to deliver the actual score, causing the show to inevitably run behind schedule.
After that procedure, we then get the public vote added to each song one by one, starting with the song placed last by the juries. That usually builds up to a tight climax where three or four songs leapfrog into the lead and then there is some suspense … and then Sweden almost certainly wins (probably).
Salut! Hello! Hallå! Привіт! ¡Hola! Ahoj! Γειά σου!
Bonsoir et bienvenue à la couverture en direct du 69e Eurovision par le Guardian.
That is about as much French as I can manage which may be a little tricky tonight as Switzerland is sure to serve up some multi-lingual hosting this evening.
There is going to be a lot to enjoy tonight, even if a couple of the things I really liked got knocked out at the semi-final stage *shakes fist at sky*. More on that later.
It is Martin Belam here with you tonight. It is the fourth time I’ve done it now, and I’ve possibly got the hang of it, although the chaotic third act of me trying to live blog the results coming in when I’ve had too much prosecco is surely going to reappear.
The show starts at 9pm CEST, 8pm BST, and I will be with you every step of the way as your second-screen guide. You can get in touch with me at [email protected] – and if you put EUROVISION as the subject line your email will be easier to find.
