Seventy years of sequins, solidarity, and slightly chaotic voting blocs, and this year Austria finally gave me a reason again to feel proud of what it put on stage.
We are living through a period where every political conversation defaults to separation. Borders, identity, us versus them. And into that landscape, once a year, comes an event where 37-plus countries send their weirdest, most earnest, most creative individual and say: here, judge this, not me.
Most scientific literature on prejudice and discrimination points to the same root cause: the unknown. We fear what we have not encountered. Contact theory, the idea that simply being in proximity to someone different reduces bias, has held up reasonably well across decades of research. Eurovision is contact theory at continental scale, wrapped in glitter.
Coming together and having fun is not naive. It is the only empirically proven way to dissolve the fear of the unknown.
This is also why I genuinely disagree with countries like Spain and the Netherlands choosing not to attend in protest of other participating nations. I understand the impulse. But withdrawing from the room is the same behaviour, structurally, that you are protesting against. The moment we start placing national flags above individual human creative work, we have already conceded the argument. The artist is not the government. The song is not the foreign policy.
I feel the same ambivalence about the debates around World Cup hosting countries. Yes, those conversations matter. But when the instinct becomes "do not gather", we lose something that cannot be recovered by press releases. Unity requires proximity. You cannot achieve it from a distance.
What Austria actually got right
I live in Austria. I also pay the obligatory media fee (the GIS, now OBS) every year, which has historically felt like a subscription I never opted into. This was, genuinely, the first time I felt okay about it.
Austria has had a complicated relationship with big public events, and merit has not always been the deciding factor in who gets platformed. To be direct about it: the last several years have surfaced some uncomfortable patterns. There have been political appointments to prominent media and cultural roles that raised eyebrows, cases where proximity to the right party or the right social circle appeared to count for more than demonstrated competence. The Ibiza affair and its aftershocks exposed just how intertwined political influence and cultural gatekeeping had become. Decisions about who hosts, who presents, who gets the stage have not always been made purely on the strength of what someone can do. Connections have mattered. Names have opened doors that talent alone would not.
This year felt different. The two hosts were competent, creative, and genuinely added something to the show rather than just filling the gaps between postcards. They addressed the Austria-Australia confusion, that perennial source of bewilderment for Austrians travelling abroad, with real wit. The framing device itself was a smart one: a university setting where students quiz Professor Eurovision on the difficult questions, and the professor actually answers them with perspective rather than deflection. Tackling uncomfortable topics while keeping the tone light and inclusive is harder than it looks, especially in a format that has struggled lately to take a clear stance on anything. And the country delegations seemed to have picked up on that signal too. The artist choices this year felt more heterogeneous again. Pun fully intended.
The artistry was visible. That matters. And it mattered more precisely because it is not the baseline we have been used to.
I do want to say one honest thing, though. I have noticed in the last few editions a shift in balance. The cultural diversity and the music itself occasionally get overshadowed by identity politics in the presentation layer. My internal calibration alerts when anything, including representation, tips from genuine visibility into performance. The goal is not to replace one kind of overrepresentation with another. The music should stay centred. That is my personal read, not a grievance.
On the broader Austria question: I hope what happened on that stage translates into the rest of Austrian media and political life. Because right now it largely has not. People with immigrant backgrounds make up roughly 22 percent of Austria's total population, and that share is considerably higher in Vienna, above 35 percent by most estimates. Yet representation in Austrian broadcast television, in political office, and in visible opinion leadership remains significantly below those proportions. A 2022 study by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute found that people with migration backgrounds are consistently underrepresented in Austrian news coverage and, when they do appear, are more likely to appear in contexts framing them as a problem rather than as participants in public life. The ESC stage was, briefly, more representative of what Austria actually looks like than most prime-time Austrian television. That gap is worth talking about.
Seventy years is not an accident
ESC launched in 1956. It has survived the Cold War, the Balkan conflicts, Brexit, a pandemic, and approximately forty-seven different scoring system reforms. It now includes countries that are geographically stretching the definition of "European" quite creatively, and I am completely fine with that.
The growth in participating countries is not a bureaucratic accident. It reflects something real: the desire to be seen, to share something you made, and to be welcomed into a room. That is European heritage in its most honest form.
Because here is what I think gets missed in national-level history conversations: our democracy is Greek, our infrastructure is mostly Roman, our legal frameworks are built on centuries of cross-border conflict and negotiation. You cannot divide European success into national portions. It does not carve that way. The ESC, at its best, knows this. It does not celebrate Austria or Finland or whoever wins. It celebrates the fact that all of them showed up.
We need more formats that do this. Not fewer.
My (completely unscientific) prediction
The bookmakers favour Finland or Australia. I respect the data. I disagree with the conclusion. I think a country starting with the letter B has a strong case this year. But if I am wrong, I am genuinely happy handing it to the Austrialiens.
What I'd actually do:
- Watch at least the finale live, not on catch-up. The chaos of live voting is irreplaceable and cannot be streamed the same way twice.
- Follow one or two artists from countries you know nothing about. The discovery layer of Eurovision is underused.
- Resist the urge to only engage with your own country's entry. The whole point is the room, not the corner.
- If you are in Austria, look at the OBS annual report and ask what that budget is actually building in terms of representation. It is a fair question.
Seventy years in, Eurovision is still the most honest thing on European television, not because it is perfect, but because it keeps showing up. And this year, Austria kept up. Merci, Cherie!