Eurovision Song Contest United Kingdom 2023

Although the Kalush Orchestra won the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Italy with the song called Stefania, it wasn’t possible to arrange the competition safely in Ukraine because of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. The EBU started discussions with the host broadcaster BBC and Eurovision Song Contest 2023 took place in Liverpool, United Kingdom. This was the ninth time the United Kingdom hosted the competition. Total of 37 countries participated in the competition and for the first time ever there was a chance to vote also from a non-participating country and votes were counted together as a “Rest of the World” points. This was also the first time when only televotes would decide the results of the Semi-Finals. The first Semi-Final was held on May 9th and the second Semi-Final was held on May 11th. The winner was selected at the Grand Final on May 13th. The winner of the competition was Loreen from Sweden with a song called Tattoo. The song gained a total of 583 points and it was the seventh Eurovision Song Contest victory for Sweden and second victory for Loreen after Euphoria in 2012.

The Eurovision fans weren’t completely satisfied with the results as Finland had the highest points of the Semi Finals and at the Final it came 133 points ahead of Sweden in the televote, the largest gap to date for an entry that did not win. Finland received the full 12 points from 18 different countries in the televoting, while Sweden did not win 12 points from any. The presenters had to ask the live audience to quiet down from shouting “Cha Cha Cha” or “Käärijä” for multiple times during the results revealing and afterwards there was also petitions to either give up the juries completely or at least reduce the weight of juries from the current 50% of the results.