Black Eurovision contestants increased in 1990s

Organisers of the Eurovision have defended the contest against claims that racism had been a factor in the UK's poor record in recent years. Andrew Lloyd Webber suggested in a Radio Times interview that black contestants fared worse in the voting.

During the most recent Eurovision contests in Malmö (2024) and Basel (2025), anti-Israel protesters filled the streets and Israel's participants were given armed guards. Last year, Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the 7 October attacks, told the BBC she had "practised being booed" during rehearsals. During the final, two protesters attempted to storm the stage as she performed her song New Day Will Rise.

This year's hopefuls include a man entirely covered in silver paint, a fake gorilla, an actual Boy George - and the longest high note in Eurovision history.

They also want to hear songs which are politically and socially engaged, you know, so with issues such as those of the Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter and, and so on, but they also want to hear these issues presented creatively and perhaps with a story behind them. So the Russian entry this year also did well, Manizha; she’s been very active in women’s rights issues in Russia. Her song Russian Woman was a feminist song. And it was so well done a combination of hip hop and Russian folk. This is what viewers of Eurovision want to see.

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.

Besides slight modifications to the voting system and other contest rules, no fundamental changes to the contest's format were introduced until the events in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to the breakup of Yugoslavia, with the subsequent admission into the EBU of the broadcasters of the countries that emerged from the breakup, and to the merger in 1993 of the EBU with its Eastern European counterpart, the International Radio and Television Organisation (OIRT), which further expanded the number of broadcasters by including those from countries of the former Eastern Bloc.

More recently, Duncan Laurence, ... streamed Eurovision entry on Spotify. Måneskin, winners for Italy in 2021 with "Zitti e buoni", subsequently achieved worldwide popularity in the months following their victory. The performer and the songwriter(s) of the winning song only receive a medal or a trophy, while its participating broadcaster ...

The 1990s was a breakthrough decade with 14 acts featuring black artists with two of these finishing runner-up.