The 2017 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv. The right to host the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest came after Jamala won the 2016 edition in Stockholm with her song 1944.
You can watch the entire Grand Final on BBC ONE Saturday 13 May 8.00pm-11.25pm with our quick and easy to install UK VPN.
Here is a bit of background on the biggest music completion on Earth !!
Forty two countries will compete in 2017 Eurovision Song Contest including Romania and Portugal who are returning to the competition after a year’s absence. The 2017 contest will be a special one for Austria, Denmark and the United Kingdom which are celebrating the 60th anniversary of their first participation in 1957.
Kyiv was announced as Host City in September 2016 following a competitive city bid process. The decision was made after six candidate cities originally presented their bids to the Organising Committee. The International Exhibition Centre, the venue for the contest, has capacity for up to 11,000 spectators.
The history of the Eurovision Song Contest began as the brainchild of Marcel Bezençon of the EBU. The Contest was based on Italy's Sanremo Music Festival and was designed to test the limits of live television broadcast technology.
The first Contest was held on 24 May 1956, when seven nations participated. With a live orchestra, the norm in the early years, and simple sing-along songs on every radio station, the Contest grew into a true pan-European tradition.
In the beginning, it was obvious for the participants that they should sing in their country's nativr tongue. However, as the Swedish entry in 1965, Absent Friend, was sung in English, the EBU set very strict rules on the language in which the songs could be performed. National languages had to be used in all lyrics. Song writers across Europe soon tagged onto the notion that success would only come if the judges could understand the content, resulting in such entries as Boom- Bang-A-Bang and La La La. In 1973, the rules on language use were relaxed, and in the following year ABBA would win with Waterloo. Those freedom of language rules would be soon reversed in 1977, to return with apparent permanent status in the 1999 contest.
The voting systems used in the Contest have changed throughout the years. The modern system has been in place since 1975. Voters award a set of points from 1 to 8, then 10 and finally 12 to songs from other countries — with the favourite being awarded the now famous douze points. Historically, a country's set of votes was decided by an internal jury, but in 1997 five countries experimented with televoting, giving members of the public in those countries the opportunity to vote en masse for their favourite songs. The experiment was a success and from 1998 all countries were encouraged to use televoting wherever possible. Nowadays members of the public may also vote by SMS. Whichever method of voting is used – jury, telephone or SMS – countries may not cast votes for their own songs.
The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s led to a sudden increase in numbers, with many former Eastern Bloc countries queuing up to compete for the first time. This process has continued to this day with more and more countries joining. For this reason, in 2004 the Semi-Final format was introduced by the EBU which turned into two Semi-Finals for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008. Now all countries, except the 'Big Five' – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom – together with the host country, must be in a Semi-Final top-10 to qualify for the Final.
In 2015, the Eurovision Song Contest celebrated its 60th anniversary. The BBC hosted a grand anniversary show in London, featuring over a dozen former participants. And to honour the country's Eurovision Song Contest commitment for over 30 years, the organisers admitted Australia to participate for the first time ever.
