Liverpool and Glasgow finalists to host competition on behalf of Ukraine

Liverpool, in the north of England, and Glasgow, in Scotland, are the two finalist cities to host the 2023 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, organized by the United Kingdom on behalf of Ukraine due to the war, the BBC announced on Tuesday, September 27. The final choice will be announced “in the next weeks”said the public television group.

The United Kingdom, which has hosted the competition eight times, has not hosted it since 1998 in Birmingham, central England. After its very symbolic first place in Turin last May, Ukraine was deprived of the right to host the 67th edition of Eurovision in June by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which considered that the security conditions were not met due to the invasion of the country by Russia.

An agreement had been announced on July 25 by the EBU and the British government for the BBC to stage the contest in the United Kingdom, which came second behind Ukraine, in a version that will feature the country still at war. Twenty British cities had applied to host Eurovision on behalf of Ukraine. A first selection of seven cities (Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield) was unveiled in August.

Since the start of the Russian invasion at the end of February, the United Kingdom has shown strong political and military support for kyiv, notably imposing unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow. The new British Prime Minister Liz Truss again assured the UN General Assembly last week that her country will continue to provide military aid to Ukraine until its victory against Russia.