Eurovision 2020: Rotterdam

There is no winner of the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest. There was no contest. It is the only year since 1956 without one.

What was planned

The Netherlands had won in Tel Aviv, and nine Dutch cities applied to host. The choice came down to two. Maastricht’s council voted against the agreement it was offered; Rotterdam signed, and on 30 August 2019 it was named host city.

The shows were set for 12, 14 and 16 May 2020 in the Rotterdam Ahoy arena, under the slogan “Open Up”. Three presenters had been chosen. Forty-one countries had entered, with Bulgaria and Ukraine returning and Hungary and Montenegro dropping out. By early March every one of the 41 had picked its singer and its song.

The final was to have included eight former winners performing their songs, from Gigliola Cinquetti, who won in 1964, to Duncan Laurence.

March

Then the coronavirus reached Europe.

Denmark held its national final in an empty hall. When the heads of delegation met on 9 March, several countries took part by video link, and so did the EBU’s own supervisor, who was not allowed to travel. The fan concerts that normally lead up to the contest were called off one after another.

On 18 March the EBU cancelled the contest.

It explained why none of the alternatives would work. It could not be postponed, because nobody knew when the pandemic would end, and a late contest would leave the winner too little time to organise the next. It could not be held without an audience, because the crews and delegations alone would break the distancing rules. A contest performed remotely was rejected too.

The Ahoy was put to another use. With hospital beds running short, it became a temporary care facility. Work on the stage had been due to start there on 6 April.

What happened instead

On 16 May, the night the final should have been held, the Dutch broadcasters put out a live programme from a studio in Hilversum. “Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light” showed all 41 songs without asking anyone to vote. Forty-five countries broadcast it.

The songs themselves were finished. The rules did not allow them to be carried over, so every country would need a new entry for 2021, though it was free to send the same performer. The Dutch kept the right to host, in the same arena, a year late.

Fans filled the gap themselves. A journalist, Rob Holley, started a weekly online viewing of old contests under the name EurovisionAgain. It caught on so quickly that the EBU joined in, streaming a past final every Saturday night, and it raised more than £24,000 for charity.

Several countries ran their own votes on the songs that would have competed. Both Sweden’s and Australia’s were won by the same one: Iceland’s “Think About Things”, by Daði og Gagnamagnið.

A plot

One more thing about 2020 came out much later.

In February 2020 a Swedish man living in Luxembourg, alleged to belong to a neo-Nazi group, was arrested and accused of making explosives. At his trial in July 2025, prosecutors said he had been planning an attack on the contest in Rotterdam, with explosives and chlorine gas. He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Dutch media reported that the police and prosecutors had known of the plot at the time, and had not told the broadcaster or the city.