Of the twenty cities that had expressed an interest in hosting the iconic contest, seven British cities have been selected to host the next Eurovision song contest, organized by the United Kingdom on behalf of Ukraine due to of the Russian invasion, the BBC reported on Friday.
Eurovision will announce in autumn which city, among those of Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, will be the big winner to host the event, in May 2023. Cities like London and Belfast (Northern Ireland ) were discarded.
In June, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) considered that the security conditions were not met for Ukraine to organize the competition and launched negotiations with the United Kingdom, which came in second place. The United Kingdom has not hosted Eurovision since the 1998 edition which took place in Birmingham in central England. The country has hosted the competition eight times.
After its very symbolic first place in Turin last May, Ukraine had, at first, strongly contested the decision of the organizer of the event, followed each year by tens of millions of television viewers, to withdraw the 67th edition of the competition for security reasons.
An agreement was announced on July 25 by the EBU and the British government for the BBC to stage the contest in a version that will feature Ukraine. The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of support for kyiv since the start of the Russian invasion, imposing unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow and supplying the Ukrainian army with lethal weapons at an early stage. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has remained in close contact with President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he has visited twice since the start of the new Russian offensive in February.
Big favorite, the Kalush Orchestra, a Ukrainian rap group, won the final of the competition on May 14 with the song Stefania, mixing hip-hop and traditional music, a victory symbolizing Ukrainian resilience in the war and European popular solidarity. With its title space manthe Briton Sam Ryder had won second place, an unexpected result for the Britons, accustomed to the bottom of the table in recent years.