It’s Saturday night, 17th May 2025, and what are most Brits doing? Grabbing a glass of bubbly, breaking open the snacks, and settling in for the greatest singing competition of the year, Eurovision 2025 (sorry, Britain’s Got Talent). This year’s line-up is looking particularly exciting. They have a good mix of dance anthems, ballads, and the occasional emo breakthrough. The hostesses, Hazel Brugger, Sandra Struder, and Michelle Hunziker, are full of energy. It looks like it’s going to be a good night.
Eurovision 2025’s competition is being hosted by Switzerland, and they’ve really gone all out to make this something special. The stage has a long catwalk ready to facilitate the competition entries as well as the interval shows and everything in between. The lights are on, the music is loud, and we’re ready to get stuck into this year’s spectacular show with Graham Norton leading the charge for Britain in the commentating booth.
Let The Games Begin
Norway’s Kyle Alessandro kicks Eurovision 2025 off with a lively number, punctuated by a fast display of pyrotechnics. The performance is flawless, and this runs into the subsequent entries. Everyone is on top form following their extensive rehearsals, and it’s clear that this is going to be a particularly good year just by the array of sounds we find in the first five entries. We have the more folksy sound of Estonia, the epic ballad of Israel, and then the emo rock of Lithuania.
The U.K.’s entry is in at #8. This year, we’re being presented by Remember Monday with What the Hell Just Happened. The poor girls were sent up to the Swiss mountains for the introductory video, and with the U.K.’s temperate climate, they do look a little shell-shocked in the cold. As for the song, never fear, we as a nation can rest proudly. The girls pull off a marvellous performance, clearly enjoying themselves up on that iconic Eurovision 2025 stage. It does beg the question as to why they were dressed in what appeared to be satin curtains and dancing on a giant half-sunken chandelier, but it’s Eurovision, we roll with it.
Some other notable entries this year are Austria with their entry JJ, who is an operatic tenor and shows off their technical range within their song to a truly memorable degree, Germany’s Abor and Tynna with their old-school but incredibly solid club anthem, Greece’s Klavdia with her gothic librarian vibe and the epic drama of her number and Switzerland’s entry, Zoe Me, who has possibly the most incredible, smoky vocals of this entire competition.
All of these performances are utterly spectacular, but the question now is who will rake in the most of those coveted votes and take the crown for Eurovision 2025, bringing the competition home to their country?
Voting is Good
During the interval, as the votes are cast and tallied, there are a few class acts from previous Eurovision competitions that come to entertain the masses. Eurovision really does give out awards to eclectic numbers, as the diversity of the acts is really wonderful to behold. But as these acts finish and the interviews with the competitors for this year’s competition are concluded, it’s time to watch the points roll in and the real question on everyone’s minds is: will our country be the one to get the dreaded ‘nil poi’?
The voting for Eurovision is split into two separate sections: a jury of voters assembled from each participating country, followed by the vote of the general public. Our hostesses begin by addressing each country’s representative for the jury votes, and for some reason, many of them want to contribute their own musical number to this festival of music this year.
Has the world gone musical mad? Or is this that one episode of Scrubs where the poor patient was hearing everything as though she were living a musical in real life? Either way, the points are distributed, and at the end, it’s Austria in the lead with Switzerland following close behind, two of the solid numbers, and the U.K. has received enough to put us in 10th place. All is well.
Then, of course, the public vote kicks off, and goodness, doesn’t that just disrupt the natural order of things? Israel shoots up the ranks like it’s suddenly riding a rocket, and several countries get a swift kick in the teeth when they receive single-digit public responses. The U.K. received a whopping 0, but the truly baffling thing about all this is that Switzerland, which is well to do in the jury voting, also receives nil poi from the audience.
This is one of those moments where you have to wonder about public voting and what on Earth they’re watching. Zoe Me genuinely had one of the most amazing voices, and yet her song didn’t translate to the public. Why? Was it the lack of effects? The fact that she stands in very peculiar half shadows to sing her piece rather than overwhelming the audience with technical displays of light manipulation?
Made in Switzerland
Whatever is going on with the general public and its lack of functional ears, it’s Austria that finally takes the win, snatching it away from Israel at the last possible moment with a public vote of 178. It’s clear to see that JJ is absolutely ecstatic as he jumps at his team, cries, and moves around with manic abandon. It’s a fine victory, one that goes to a young boy who very clearly deserves it, and it will be exciting to see what Austria manages to cook up for their own Eurovision journey in 2026.
