The Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la chanson) was first held in 1956. Following a series of exchange broadcasts in 1954 through its Eurovision transmission network, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) commissioned an international song competition, from an idea proposed by Sergio Pugliese and developed by Marcel Bezençon, and originally based on the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy.
70 contests have been held since its first edition, and 1,789 songs representing 52 countries have been performed on the Eurovision stage as of 2026. The contest has seen numerous changes since its inauguration, such as the introduction of relegation in the 1990s, and subsequently semi-finals in the 2000s, as a response to growing numbers of interested participants. The rules of the contest have also seen multiple changes over the years, with the voting system and language criteria being modified on several occasions.
The Eurovision Song Contest is the longest-running annual international televised music competition in the world, as determined by Guinness World Records, and around 40 countries now regularly take part each year. Several other competitions have been inspired by Eurovision in the years since its formation, and the EBU has also created a number of complimentary contests which focus on other aspects of music and culture. The 2020 edition of the contest was the first to be cancelled, as no competitive event was able to take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
An individual slogan has been associated with each edition of the contest since 2002, with the exception of 2009. This slogan is decided by the host broadcaster and is then used to develop the contest's visual identity and design. This slogan is typically used by the producers in planning and formulating the show's visual identity, and is channelled into the contest's stage design, the opening and interval acts, and the "postcards": short videos interspersed between the entries which usually highlight the host country, and in many cases introduce the competing acts. The slogan of the 2023 contest, "United by Music", was announced on 14 November 2023 to be retained for future editions of the event. For the 2025 contest in Basel, Switzerland, the host broadcaster SRG SSR introduced a motto for that year's event, "Welcome Home", which was included in addition to the "United by Music" slogan within the visual identity and design.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was formed in 1950, when the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) hosted a conference with 23 organisations at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay, England, with the aim of establishing cooperation on creative endeavours and setting a foundation for the exchange of television programmes across borders. "Eurovision" as a term in telecommunications was first used by British journalist George Campey in the Evening Standard in 1951, when he referred to a BBC programme being relayed by Dutch television; the EBU's Eurovision transmission network was subsequently founded in 1954, at the time formed of a series of microwave links across Europe.
In the years following the formation of the EBU a number of big events were transmitted via their infrastructure, including the coronation of Elizabeth II, which was broadcast in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, in addition to the United Kingdom. In September 1953, an EBU meeting in London resulted in a series of international exchange programmes organised the following year, entitled the "European Television Season", and relayed live across Europe through the Eurovision network. The first of these programmes was shown on 6 June 1954, showing coverage of the Narcissus Festival held in Montreux, Switzerland, followed by a tour of Vatican City. Further events were broadcast over the following days, including the Palio di Siena, an athletics meet in Glasgow, a parade by the Royal Navy passing Queen Elizabeth II, and live transmission of football matches from the 1954 FIFA World Cup in Switzerland, the first time the FIFA World Cup was accompanied by live television coverage.
Following this summer season of programmes, the EBU formed a "Programme Committee" to investigate new initiatives for cooperation between broadcasters each year, with Marcel Bezençon, Director-General of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR), serving as the committee's first President, and Rene McCall, deputy director of the BBC, and Jean d'Arcy, Director of the French broadcaster Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF), serving as Vice Presidents. This committee met in Monte Carlo in January 1955, and approved two new projects for further study: a European song competition, initially proposed by Sergio Pugliese from the Italian broadcaster Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI), and a contest of amateur entertainers; the latter idea was eventually discarded. On 19 October 1955, at the annual General Assembly of the EBU, held in the Palazzo Corsini in Rome under the Presidency of the Director-General of the BBC Sir Ian Jacob, the EBU agreed to the organising of the song contest, under the initial title of the European Grand Prix, and accepted a proposal by the Swiss delegation to host the event in Lugano in the spring of 1956. A planning sub-group was formed to establish the rules of the competition, headed by Eduard Hass of SRG SSR, which used the Italian Sanremo Music Festival as a basis for their work, with several amendments and additions made to better reflect this new international version.
The Eurovision Song Contest 1956 was the first edition of the contest, organised by Radio svizzera italiana (RSI) on behalf of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR) and held on 24 May 1956 at the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano, Switzerland. The regulations for this first contest allowed one participating broadcast organisation from each country to submit two songs of between 3 and 3½ minutes in length, the only edition to permit more than one song per country. Each country was strongly encouraged to hold a national contest to select their competing entries. Seven countries entered the inaugural contest, with entries received from Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Voting in this first contest was held behind closed doors: two jury members from each country situated at the venue ranked the competing songs, including those of their own country. Switzerland's Lys Assia was crowned the contest's first winner, with the song "Refrain". Only the overall winner of the contest was announced at its conclusion, and the full results have never been made public. No known video footage of the event is known to survive beyond newsreel of the winning reprise; audio of most of the contest however does exist.
The Eurovision Song Contest 1957 was the second edition of the contest, organised by Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) on behalf of ARD and held on 3 March 1957 at the Großer Sendesaal des hessischen Rundfunks in Frankfurt, West Germany. Early rules established that a different broadcaster would take on the task of organising the contest each year, and Germany was selected to host the 1957 event. Ten countries entered this second contest, with the seven original broadcasters joined by Austria, Denmark and the United Kingdom, with each country submitting one song for consideration. Taking inspiration from the Festival of British Popular Songs, organised by the BBC in August 1956 which included a scoreboard and voting by regional juries, the contest organisers decided to incorporate these ideas into the pan-European contest, allowing viewers at home to follow the voting procedure. A new voting system was introduced in tandem, with a jury of ten members in each country casting a single vote for their favourite song; jury members from one country could not vote for the song of their own country, a rule which still applies to the present day. The Netherlands was voted the winner, represented by Corry Brokken with the song "Net als toen".