EuroMusic Song Contest 8

The EuroMusic Song Contest 8 was the eighth edition of the EuroMusic Song Contest. The host country was Greece, that won the last edition, with the song One last breath. It was the first time that Greece hosted this contest.

Eighteen countries participated in this edition. Israel withrew and Switzerland returned. The EBU put a maximum on the amouth of countries.

When the voting was over, it was clear that Sweden won this edition with 157 points, a record. It was the second victory for Sweden in the contest. The United Kingdom finished second, for the third time. Malta completed the top 3.

Location
Afther the Greek victory in the previous edition, the ERT announced that they will host the eighth edition. They said to choose a host venue, through a selection.

Three citties applied at the ERT and EBU to host this edition. The interested citties were: Athens (the Greek capital), Heraklion (the capital of Crete) and Thessaloniki (the second-largest city in Greece).

Here you can see the cities and venues who where intrested to host the contest.

Host venue

The ERT announced that Athens would host the eight edition. In their announcement, they also said that the decision of the venue would be taken later. One week later the EBU revealed that the Heraklion Olympic Arena was choosen as host venue. There would be a capacity of 13.500 people, so far the second biggest venue of the contest.

Number of participants
Since the seventh edition the EBU announced to put a maximum at the number of participants. In the seventh edition, eighteen countries were able to participate. After the 7th edition, the EBU publiched a post that for this edition, there will be again a maximum of countries. Later on, they said that it's still in discussion our the number of eighteen countries can raise to twenty-one. When the EBU published the official list of participants, it was clear that the maximum was not raised to twenty-one.

Running order
The EBU announced before the start of the seventh edition, that they would change the rules about the running order for the final. In all the previous editions, all countries got a random number to perform. The complaints to change the rule were because of the reason that some countries were always in the same half.

The EBU announced that for this edition, the host country will have a random number. The rest of the countries will be split in to groups (first- and second half). This will happen fully random. After, a team will create a running order.

Song
Each country sends one song to the contest. There are no rules about the language of the song, but the song can't be longer than five minutes.

Voting rules
After that all the participating countries have sang their song, each single country awards a set of points. The country who gets the most amount of points wins the contest. If two or more countries receive the same number of points, the country that got the highest point will rank higher.

Voting
https://scorewiz.eu/scoreboard/view/247138/euromusic-song-contest-07--athens

12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points received:

Returning counties

 * Switzerland.jpg Switzerland; When the official list of participants was published by the EBU, it was clear that Switzerland would return after a break of four editions. Normally, they were planning their return in the previous edition, but because of the limit of 18 countries they were not allowed to return.

Withrawing countries

 * Israel.jpg Israel; the Israeli broadcaster, KAN, announced that, due the disappointing results in the contest in the previous editions, they would withraw from the contest.