Due to the corona pandemic, there was no Eurovision Song Contest in 2020. It is now known: 41 countries will be in Rotterdam in 2021.
41 countries will take part in the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam, which was officially announced on Monday (October 26th). These are exactly the 41 nations that should have started in 2020. Due to the corona pandemic, the ESC was canceled in May 2020.
"We have set the bar high to put on three great live shows for an audience of 180 million people even in these challenging times. To achieve this, we are working on a comprehensive protocol that will ensure the health of employees, participants, the press and the audience as well as possible ", says Sietse Bakker, Executive Producer of the Eurovision Song Contest 2021.
Four possible ESC scenarios
The grand finale of the ESC 2021 should take place on May 22nd. Six countries have already been set for this: Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain as well as the host, the Netherlands. Ten more acts from each of the two semi-final shows on May 18 and 20, 2021 will be added.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced in September that due to the Corona crisis, four possible scenarios were being worked on for the show. In addition to the normal ESC competition, three alternatives are conceivable. A competition with social distancing provides, among other things, a minimum distance of 1.5 meters between all visitors. The audience would be smaller and would be drawn from among the ticket holders, but all acts could come to Rotterdam with smaller delegations.
In a competition with travel restrictions, not all participants can enter the Netherlands. These candidates should then appear in their home country, but the rest should be there as planned. In the case of a competition in (partial) lockdown, on the other hand, all acts should perform in their own country, the audience would completely disappear. A decision is to be made in early 2021 about what the 65th ESC will look like.
Who sings for Germany?
Among the 41 participating countries, 20 nations will have their acts from 2020 run again so far. Most recently Iceland announced that Daði og Gagnamagnið will also start in 2021. Among others, Belgium, Greece, Israel, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Romania, Spain, Slovenia as well as Switzerland and Ukraine rely on their participants from 2020.
However, it has not yet been decided who will represent Germany in 2021. Ben Dolic (23), who was selected in 2020 with "Violent Thing", wants to try again with a new song, but will he prevail again? Two juries – the expert jury and the Eurovision jury – will decide.