EuroMusic Song Contest 25

The EuroMusic Song Contest 25 was the twenty fifth edition of the EuroMusic Song Contest. The host country was Slovakia, that won the previous edition, with the song I'm still alive. This was the first time that Slovakia hosted this contest.

Azerbaijan won the contest for the second time. They received points from every country. Russia finished at the second place. Belgium completed the top three.

Location
After the Slovak victory in the previous edition, RTVS announced that they were not prepared to host this edition. They started to nagotiate with the EBU. Some days later, the Slovak broadcaster said that they were pleased to announce that the contest would come to Slovakia. It was the first EuroMusic-event that took place in Slovakia.

They said to choose a host venue, through a selection. Each city was able to select one or two venues. Only Bratislava selected one venue: the Ondrej Nepela Arena.

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

Host venue

There as only one city and venue who applied to host this edition. As result of this, the Ondrej Nepela Arena in Bratislava was automatically selected as host venue.

Number of participants
Since the seventh edition the EBU announced to put a maximum at the number of participants. In the seventh and eighth edition, eighteen countries were able to participate.

Because the introduction of the semi finals, there is no maximum of participating countries. However, since the seventeenth edition the EBU announced that they would put a new maximum of countries. This meant that 41 countries were able to sign for a participation. This means that each semi final would have 20 countries, plus the host nation (who qualify automatically). Until now, they never reached this limit.

For this edition, the EBU decided to drop the semi finals because of the lack of interesting broadcasters. 21 countries would be able to sign up to participate. It will be the first time since the ninth edition that there will be no semi final.

Running order
There are specific rules about how a country gets his running order.

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. Later on, a team will create a running order to make the show as interesting as possible.

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 received from the most countries points, will be ranked higher. If that is also the same, then the country who have the highest rank of a country, will be ranked higher.

Returning artists
The contest featured six representatives who also previously performed as lead vocalists for the same or for another country.

Scoreboard
https://scorewiz.eu/scoreboard/view/356476/euromusic-song-contest-25--grand-final

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

Withdrawing countries

 * Armenia.jpg Armenia - This country was not an the official list of particpating countries.
 * Georgia.jpg Georgia - This country was not an the official list of particpating countries.
 * Israel.jpg Israel - The Israeli broadcaster decided to withdraw from the competition.
 * Lithuania.jpg Lithuania - This country was not an the official list of particpating countries.
 * Netherlands.jpg Netherlands - The Dutch broadcaster signed up to participate but because there were only 21 spots, they were not able to take part in this edition.
 * Romania.jpg Romania - When the grand final of the previous editon was finished, the Romanian broadcaster said that they were thinking of withdrawing from the competition. Later on, it was clear that Romania was not on the official list of particpating countries.
 * Serbia.jpg Serbia - This country was not an the official list of particpating countries.