Scandals, mishaps and lore

At the end, the jury's chairman, Rolf Liebermann, announced one thing: the winner was "Refrain", sung by Lys Assia for Switzerland.

Winning meant singing the song again. Assia came back on, was overcome partway through, lost her place in the lyrics, and had to ask the orchestra to start over.

Italy was drawn to sing first. Domenico Modugno performed "Nel blu, dipinto di blu" — and in several countries the picture or the sound never arrived.

When Boyle reached Oslo, the Norwegian spokesman read his results in the wrong format. He was supposed to give each song's number and country before its points, and didn't.

The scoreboard was operated by students from the University of Vienna, and they got it wrong several times during the live show.

When France read out its votes, its spokesperson left out the four points it had given Yugoslavia. The scrutineer did not notice.

Not all the numbers read out on the night were right. The Greek and French spokespeople both gave the same score to more than one country.

Sweden's Björn Skifs did not like the rule that made him sing in Swedish. His plan was to sing in English regardless.

It was the last year the points were read out in the order the songs had been performed, and it was a messy one.

Charell did everything in German, then again in French, then again in English: country, title, singer, lyricist, composer, conductor, twenty times over.

The interval act was a stuntman who called himself Guy Tell and worked with high-powered crossbows.

The very first song went wrong.

It showed. Rehearsals kept starting late because the orchestra kept arriving late. On the night the lighting failed during several songs, and the sound system in the hall cut out during Sweden's.

The voting was by jury, country by country, in the order the songs had been sung. Malta should have voted eighth.

When Spain's votes were read out, the spokesperson gave six points to "Holland". Bryn heard "Poland", and that is where the points went.

The winner is supposed to walk back on and sing. Dana International did not appear.

After the contest it emerged that Spain's televote had been added up wrongly. Germany, which should have had Spain's twelve points, had been given none, and the other scores from Spain were affected in turn.

Dana International came on to present the trophy. As she lifted it she lost her balance and went over, taking the winning songwriters down with her.

An hour after the semi-final ended, the EBU found that the count was wrong.

During one of the pauses for advertising, the presenters tried to talk live to Germany, Spain and Turkey. Only Germany answered.

Spanish television was committed to showing a tennis tournament and put the second semi-final out more than an hour late.

In the first semi-final a fault in the sound links cut several broadcasters off from their own commentators. Some of the commentators got back on air by telephoning their studios and talking down the line.

A smoke machine malfunctioned during Georgia's song, and for a few moments Nina Sublatti vanished from her own performance inside a grey cloud.

Four days after the final, the scoreboard changed.

A camera failed while the stage was being set for Ireland in the first semi-final, and a presenter had to improvise in the green room until it was fixed.

The bookmakers had no doubts. Richard was dominating the charts, his song was "Congratulations", and a second British win in a row was treated as settled.

The voting had not changed: ten jurors in each country, one vote each. The most any song took from one jury was six, and it went to the Netherlands.

Nobody had made medals for four winning teams. The singers got theirs on stage, from Massiel, the previous year's winner.

The EBU wrote a tie-break. If two or more songs finished level in first place, each would be performed again. Then the juries of every country not involved would vote by a show of hands.

Israel went ahead early. Spain caught up and then built a lead of its own.

The top of the scoreboard was tight all the way down. The United Kingdom's Bucks Fizz won with "Making Your Mind Up" on 136 points.

With three countries still to vote, the United Kingdom's Scott Fitzgerald was fifteen points ahead of Switzerland.

After the one-point finish in Dublin, the EBU rewrote the rule for a tie. There would be no more singing the songs again.

When the last jury had voted, Sweden and France were level on 146 points. Israel was third, seven behind.

Sweden stayed away. Its performers' union was on strike, and the broadcaster could not send an entry.

Claudio Villa had won Sanremo with "Non pensare a me" and was meant to sing it in Vienna. It had been released before the EBU's deadline and was thrown out.

Spain's song was "La La La", and Televisión Española had entered Joan Manuel Serrat to sing it. Then Serrat insisted on singing it in Catalan.

Norway's national final had been won by "Jeg har aldri vært så glad i noen som deg", performed by both Kirsti Sparboe and Odd Børre.

Sixteen countries came. The one missing from the year before was Austria. Officially its broadcaster could not find a suitable act.

Twelve countries turned up. It was the smallest field since 1959.

Greece entered for the first time. Turkey asked to as well, but too late — and was told that a scoreboard with room for eighteen countries had already been built.

Sweden. The hosts of 1975 did not enter. Swedish television had no money to stage another contest if it won again, and there had been public demonstrations against the last one.

Sweden returned after its year of staying away. Yugoslavia left, discouraged by a run of bad results, and did not come back until 1981.

Turkey had entered. Its song was chosen and it had a place in the running order, eleventh, between Israel and France.

The new date, 19 April, was Yom HaZikaron, Israel's day of remembrance for its fallen soldiers.

France was missing, for only the second time. Its broadcaster TF1 had declined to enter the previous November, and its head of entertainment, Pierre Bouteiller, explained why in terms nobody could misread.

Greece had a song, a singer and a place in the running order, second. A few weeks before the contest its broadcaster withdrew.

The date was 4 May, and it kept two countries away.

A record 22 countries were expected. Iceland entered for the first time, and the Netherlands and Yugoslavia came back.

Twenty-two countries entered. A few weeks before the contest, somebody noticed that the Cypriot song, "Thimame", had been heard before: it had competed in Cyprus's own national selection in 1984, under a different title.

The Greek delegation was unhappy all week with the way its song was being shot. During the dress rehearsals the song's composer behaved so aggressively that his accreditation was taken away.

Croatia finished fourth, and then lost something else. Norway's delegation had objected that the Croatian backing track contained synthesised male voices, and recorded vocals were not allowed.

Thirty-seven countries took part. Armenia entered for the first time and came eighth. Austria stayed away after a bad result, and Hungary for lack of money.

Austria did not enter. Its broadcaster had questions about how the semi-finals were organised, and a wider complaint: that the contest had become political.

Armenia had applied to take part and then withdrew, citing the safety of its delegation. The two countries were in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Forty-three countries were due in Stockholm. Three weeks before the contest there were 42.

Germany announced its singer in November 2015: Xavier Naidoo. There was an immediate outcry over political views he had expressed.

One country withdrew for reasons of its own.

Ukraine's broadcaster asked at once for Russia to be removed from the contest and its broadcasters suspended from the EBU.

Ukraine had already changed its entry once, before the war began.

The Dutch singer, Joost Klein, came second in his semi-final on the Thursday. On the Friday he walked in the flag parade at a dress rehearsal and then did not appear for his song.

The argument that followed the 2025 result did not die down. Beforehand the broadcasters of Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain each said that they would not take part if Israel did.

For RTÉ this was one of its first programmes in colour. The contest forced the broadcaster to buy colour equipment a year earlier than it had planned, at a time when about one Irish viewer in a hundred owned a colour set.

Israel entered for the first time. Its broadcaster was a member of the EBU and entitled to take part, and it became the first entrant from outside Europe.

Security was tight, because of the threat of attack by Irish republican militants. There were extra police, and tanks in the streets during contest week.

Cinquetti's song, the runner-up, was called "Sì". Italy was a month away from a referendum on divorce, and the broadcaster feared that a song called "Yes" would look like an attempt to sway the vote.

Portugal's entry, "E depois do adeus" by Paulo de Carvalho, got three votes and shared last place.

Swedish security police had intelligence that the contest might be targeted by the Red Army Faction, the West German far-left militant group.

Greece had stayed away in 1975 because of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. In 1976 it came back with a song about it, sung by Mariza Koch.

Two fears shaped the evening: an attack like the one at the Munich Olympics, and a stage invasion like the one in Copenhagen in 1964.

The contest was being shown in several North African and Middle Eastern countries that were not taking part.

More than 250 armed soldiers and police protected the event. The British entrants were watched constantly for as long as they were in Dublin, because of threats from the IRA.

Yugoslavia took part for the final time. The country that had entered since 1961 had broken up over the previous year, and the song in Malmö represented what remained, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Israel's entry was "Sameach", by a group called PingPong, and it was in trouble before it reached Stockholm.

Turkey gave points to Cyprus for the first time. Cyprus voted for Turkey for the second year running.

Georgia and Russia had fought a war the previous summer, and Georgia's first decision was not to go to Moscow at all.

The film introducing Armenia's song in the first semi-final included a monument that stands in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory Azerbaijan regards as its own.

A Russian gay rights campaigner, Nikolai Alekseev, called a pride march in Moscow for the day of the final. The city refused permission.

Western coverage of the build-up was dominated by Azerbaijan's record on democracy and human rights, and by the suggestion that the money spent on the contest was meant to distract from it.

The German votes were read by Anke Engelke, who had presented the contest a year earlier. Before she gave them she said something else.

There was pressure from the other direction too. Senior Iranian clerics condemned Azerbaijan for hosting the contest at all, and there were protests outside Iran's embassy in Baku in reply.

The contest came immediately after the revolution in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea. One practical question had to be answered: whose votes were Crimea's?

Less than two weeks before the shows the EBU published a list of flags that would not be allowed in the arena.

On 12 March Russia named its entrant, Julia Samoylova. Ten days later Ukraine's security service banned her from the country for three years.

The contest was shown in China by Mango TV. During the first semi-final two songs were simply cut out.

Supporters of the movement to boycott Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians called on broadcasters to stay away.

The star guest in the final was Madonna. Her singing was heavily criticised. And during one of her songs two dancers were seen holding each other, one with an Israeli flag on the back of their costume and the other with a Palestinian one.

One more thing about 2020 came out much later.

The contest took place seven months into the war in Gaza, and Israel's place in it was disputed from the start.

Ireland's entrant, Bambie Thug, was asked before the first semi-final to remove words written on their body in an ancient Irish script.

The flag rules changed in both directions. Performers could now show only the flag of the country they were representing, anywhere they appeared in an official capacity.

With the war in Gaza continuing, Israel's participation was contested again. Slovenia's broadcaster formally demanded that Israel be excluded.

No song was supposed to have been released commercially before 10 February.

The final dress rehearsal on the afternoon of the show is not just a rehearsal. The juries listen to it.

Russia did not let it rest. After the contest its delegation asked for Denmark to be disqualified, because for a brief moment one of the brothers' voices had been put through a vocoder to give it an electronic sound.

Sweden's entry, "Listen to Your Heartbeat", was accused again and again of copying Belgium's song of 1996. The Swedish writers denied it.

Afterwards came an allegation that juries had been trading votes. A Norwegian newspaper reported the head of the French delegation as saying that members of the Cypriot delegation had approached him to propose a swap.

Russia sent the pop duo t.A.T.u., and they arrived as favourites and behaved like it.

Russia complained. On the night Ireland's telephone results had been delayed, and Irish television had fallen back on its stand-by jury.

Before the final, a Lithuanian news site published an undercover video.

There was a second row involving Azerbaijan. Officially it gave Russia no points, although Russia's singer had reportedly come second in the Azerbaijani phone vote.

A Russian juror live-streamed her jury's deliberations on social media during a dress rehearsal. She was removed and her votes cancelled.

The rules forbid recorded vocals: what the audience hears must be sung live. Norway's entry was built on chopped-up vocal samples that could not be reproduced on stage, and after discussions the EBU granted an exception.

During the final, a clip of the Italian band in the green room showed their singer, Damiano David, leaning over a table.

During the final the EBU put out a statement. In the second semi-final, six national juries — those of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino — had shown irregular voting patterns.

Afterwards a string of broadcasters, among them those of Spain, Belgium, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Ireland and the Netherlands, called for the televoting system to be reworked.

Switzerland had just finished singing when a man walked onto the stage holding up a banner. It read "Boycot Franco & Salazar" — the dictators of Spain and Portugal, both of whose countries were competing that night.

Before the broadcast started, a BBC producer was welcoming the audience when a local headmaster began shouting at him from the seats.

The press had made Luxembourg's entry the favourite. The local audience thought it was a joke, and said so.

The United Kingdom's entry was "Love Games", by Belle and the Devotions. When it finished, there was booing from the hall — one of the first times that had been heard at the contest.

Spain's Daniel Diges sang second. Partway through his song an extra performer appeared on stage, in a Catalan cap, and joined in with the dancers.

For the second year running, Russia was booed. This time it happened during the voting, every time the country was mentioned or given a high score.

Jamala, the reigning winner, was performing in the interval when a man wrapped in an Australian flag ran onto the stage, bared his backside to the audience and was dragged off.

In the final the United Kingdom's singer, SuRie, was partway through her song when a man ran onto the stage, pulled the microphone out of her hand and began shouting into it.

There was booing before, during and after Israel's performances. Fans claimed that it had been turned down in the broadcast and applause laid over it.

Nearly everything about the 1956 vote was replaced:

Songs were supposed to last no more than about three and a half minutes. Italy's entry, sung by Nunzio Gallo, ran for five minutes and nine seconds.

The voting was rebuilt. Instead of ten jurors casting one vote each, every jury now agreed its three favourite songs and gave them three points, two points and one.

Nothing in the rules said which language a song had to be in. It was simply understood that countries sang in their own.

Both came out of 1965. After Sweden had sung in English in Naples, the rules now said every song must be performed in one of its country's national languages.

Until now an entry had been one or two singers, with up to three more allowed behind them. From 1971 a country could put six people on stage.

Any language. For the first time a song did not have to be in a language of the country it came from. Finland and Sweden sang in English.

A new way of voting had been designed for Brighton. Ten jurors in every country would each give every song between one and five votes, and the order in which countries voted would be drawn from cards live on stage, for suspense.

After the abandoned experiment in Brighton, a working group of German, Swedish and Finnish broadcasters was asked to find something better.

In 1973 countries had been freed to sing in any language. Four years on, the rule was reversed: songs had to be in a national language again.

The voting itself changed in a way that outlasted everything else about the evening. Until now each jury had read its points in the order the songs were performed.

Two of the singers caused an argument before a note was sung. France's Nathalie Pâque was 11. Israel's Gili Netanel was 12.

After the argument over two child singers in Lausanne, there was now a rule: performers had to turn 16 in the year of the contest.

Europe had changed, and it was queueing at the door. Communist governments had fallen; the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had broken up; the EBU had merged with its Eastern counterpart.

This was the first contest with relegation. The seven countries with the lowest scores in 1993 lost their places, to make room for seven that had never taken part.

Norway, as host, was in. The other 29 were sent into a qualifying round that had no stage, no audience and no pictures.

In five countries — Austria, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom — the points were decided not by a jury but by the public.

A second rule change was quieter. Until now a backing track could only carry instruments that were being mimed on stage.

The trial of 1997 became the rule. In every country except Hungary, Romania and Turkey, the points were now decided by viewers on the telephone.

The language rule. For the first time since the 1970s, a country could sing in whatever language it liked. The result was immediate: far more songs in English.

A third change mattered just as much in the long run. France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom paid more towards the contest than anyone else, and some of them had been finishing badly enough to risk relegation.

Thirty-six countries took part in Istanbul, ten more than the previous record.

Forty-three countries entered, the most yet. Azerbaijan and San Marino were new.

After criticism of the public vote, the system changed. In the final, each country's points were now decided half by viewers and half by a jury of five music professionals.

Until 2013 the order in which songs were performed was drawn by lot. Now the producers decided it.

Until now each country had blended its jury's verdict and its public's into a single set of points. From Stockholm, each country gave two: one set of 12, 10 and 8 down to 1 from its jury, and another from its viewers.

The juries lost their say in the semi-finals. Who reached the final was once again decided by viewers alone, with juries voting only on the Saturday.

The changes agreed in December were a direct response to 2025.

Winning in 1957 did not give the Netherlands the right to host. The arrangement at the time was that broadcasters would take turns, and the BBC was first in line.

France had won in 1962 and passed on hosting. Its broadcaster pointed to the cost, and to the fact that it had already staged the contest twice, in 1959 and 1961.

The EBU went down the scoreboard. Spain, second, said it had only just hosted in 1969. Germany, third, was busy with the Munich Olympics.

Luxembourg had won twice in a row and could not afford to host twice in a row. Spain, the runner-up, said no as well.

Sveriges Radio's first objection was the bill, which fell on the host alone. It tried to get the EBU and the other broadcasters to share the cost.

The EBU set a date, 26 April, and asked for volunteers by 3 September. The deadline passed without one.

There was little time and less money.

Irish television spent £530,000 on the show, £110,000 of which came from the EBU. The government expected about £2 million back from tourism.

That cost was met in a new way. Hosting the contest pushed Belgium into changing its rules on public television so that advertising and sponsorship were allowed, and RTBF sold sponsorship for the show.

It was the biggest outside broadcast RTÉ had ever attempted. The floor of the arena had to be dug out to make enough height for the stage and lights.

Latvian television worried from the start about paying for it. The government put in 5.3 million euros and the city of Riga another 1.1 million.

The venue was the Palace of Sports, and it had to be rebuilt to the EBU's standard. Work started at the end of December 2004 and was due to finish by 20 April.

Afterwards Greek television answered accusations that it had wasted taxpayers' money. The contest, it said, had made a profit.

Four countries dropped out, mainly for lack of money: Andorra, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Montenegro.

A record 195 million people watched. The production later won an international television award.

The organisation had its own crisis. A new head of the organising committee was appointed in December 2016. In February, 21 members of the team resigned, saying that the appointment had brought work to a halt for two months.

Israel's public broadcaster, the IBA, was being closed down and replaced. It shut most of its operations in the week of the contest.

The EBU turned to the runner-up. On 25 July it announced that the BBC would stage the contest in the United Kingdom, on Ukraine's behalf.

Four countries scored nothing: Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. It had never happened before, and the new system made it likely: with each jury rewarding only three songs, most of the field got nothing from most of the room.

Domenico Modugno was competing for Italy for the third time. His song, "Dio, come ti amo", had won Sanremo, and he had rearranged it since — which broke the rule that arrangements had to be settled well ahead of the contest.

The scoring system brought in three years earlier had been designed with ten sets of points from every jury, and nobody had yet failed to pick up any.

Austria's Thomas Forstner had been fifth two years earlier. This time he scored nothing.

Sweden did not enjoy its own party. Christer Björkman's song picked up nine points and finished twenty-second out of twenty-three.

At the other end, the United Kingdom's Jemini received no points at all. It was the worst result Britain had ever had.

The four countries that paid most towards the contest were guaranteed a place in the final. In Kyiv they filled the bottom of it.

Some of the contest's most successful countries were at the bottom. France and the United Kingdom shared twenty-second place.

Of the four countries with guaranteed places, the best was Spain, in sixteenth. Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom were level at the bottom on fourteen points, and the United Kingdom was placed last, for the second time in its history.

At the bottom, two countries scored nothing. One was Germany. The other was the host. Austria, a year after winning, did not receive a single point in its own arena.

Almost nobody calls it "Nel blu, dipinto di blu". As "Volare" it became one of the first Eurovision songs to matter outside Eurovision.

On the night it was heard as a song about a couple the world disapproves of. It took years for it to be widely understood that the couple were two men.

Italy's Gigliola Cinquetti sang "Non ho l'età". The hall's reaction was so loud, and went on for so long, that she was let back on stage to take a second bow — something performers at the contest simply weren't given.

Luxembourg's entry was "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", written by Serge Gainsbourg and sung by the French teenager France Gall — at seventeen, the youngest performer that year.

Luxembourg's entry, "L'amour est bleu", was sung by Vicky Leandros, credited simply as Vicky, and finished fourth.

The voting had not changed, boycott or no boycott: ten jurors a country, one vote each.

The runner-up did best of all afterwards. "Eres tú" became a hit around the world and reached the top ten of the American chart in 1974 — one of very few songs not in English to have done so.

The four members of ABBA had been trying to get here for years. Anni-Frid Lyngstad came fourth in the Swedish selection in 1969; Benny Andersson wrote the song that came second the same night.

The United Kingdom's singer was Olivia Newton-John, early in her career. British viewers had picked her song, "Long Live Love", by postcard from six she performed.

She is remembered for something else.

No country had a worse record. Norway had finished last six times, three of them without a single point, and had been in the top five only twice.

Belgium's Sandra Kim sang "J'aime la vie" and took the lead when the second of the twenty juries reported. She never lost it.

The winning song was not a big hit. The win itself mattered more. It is reported to have let Dion's manager negotiate four times the budget for her first album in English, which came out in 1990 and sold more than four million copies.

Oliver Mlakar and Helga Vlahović had been announced as hosts in March. But the organisers had also lined up a second pair in reserve, and by rehearsal week had still not decided which couple would actually front the show.

The theme of the show was rivers: the theatre stands on the Liffey, and the set was a futuristic Dublin by night with the river glowing under the floor.

Norway won with a piece that was barely a song at all. "Nocturne", by Secret Garden, was almost entirely instrumental.

Iceland's singer, Paul Oscar, was the first openly gay artist chosen to compete as a lead performer at the contest.

Israel's singer was Dana International, the first openly transgender performer the contest had seen.

The Netherlands spent the evening on something else: the fireworks disaster in the city of Enschede.

Belgium's entry was sung in a language that does not exist. "Sanomi", by the group Urban Trad, was the first song at the contest with not a word of English or of any language of the country it came from.

In the semi-final Ireland's Brian Kennedy sang "Every Song Is a Cry for Love". It was the one thousandth song performed at the contest.

Winners do not usually come back the following year. Lena did. Germany sent her again, with a different song, to defend the title on home ground.

Finland's Krista Siegfrids ended her song, "Marry Me", by kissing one of her female backing singers. She said it was a message to her own country, which had not legalised same-sex marriage.

Austria's singer was Conchita Wurst, and a good deal of the week's talk was about her beard.

Australia's SBS had been showing the contest for more than thirty years to a large and loyal audience. In February 2015 the EBU announced that, to mark the anniversary, Australia would be allowed to compete.

Then the coronavirus reached Europe.

On 16 May, the night the final should have been held, the Dutch broadcasters put out a live programme from a studio in Hilversum.

Ukraine's singer felt unwell before a rehearsal and had to isolate. A Dutch stand-in sang the part in Ukrainian, to general admiration, until the real singer's test came back negative.

The venue was the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano, a casino theatre on the lake with 700 seats. Four hundred of them were kept for invited guests; the balcony went on sale a week before.

The jury sat in another room of the same building, watching on a small television so they would see what viewers at home saw.

The designer, Gérard Dubois, took the age of Louis XIV as his theme. The stage had three revolving platforms, each divided into four like a revolving door, and each segment carried a different backdrop.

Jacqueline Joubert presented again; she is still one of only three people to have hosted the contest more than once.

Every contest before this one had been a concert with cameras pointed at it. The BBC made a television programme instead.

There was a staircase in the middle of the stage and, at either end, a revolving wall of mirrors. The walls started turning when each song began and stopped when it finished.

This was the first contest made and broadcast in colour. Seven countries saw it that way: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Salvador Dalí designed the poster.

This was the second contest in colour, and Spanish television did not own the equipment to make it. The cameras were rented from German television and brought from Cologne: five of them, three on cranes.

Twelve songs do not fill an evening. The Dutch producers had to pad, and the things they came up with are still in the show today.

The two-jurors-a-country system from Dublin stayed, with one change of scenery. The jurors were kept away from the hall, in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle, watching on television and writing down their scores after every song.

As in Amsterdam six years earlier, each song was introduced by a film of the artist at home. In 1970 several of those had been faked in Paris.

There were no films between the songs this year, and the strike was only part of the reason.

The postcards were live. A camera followed each act along a corridor and into a lift; when the doors opened, the act that had just finished was waiting to greet them, and they walked on.

Israeli television did not yet broadcast in colour, apart from a handful of special occasions. To make the show, it borrowed cameras from the BBC, just as Irish television had done in 1971.

The backdrop was a steel structure of 33 frames that resembled giant electric heaters. They carried 63,000 light bulbs between them, which could be played by hand or set to flash with the music.

For the only time, the postcards were postcards. Each film opened on a Norwegian view, then flipped over to show a greeting written in the language of the next song, complete with a Norwegian stamp chosen to match the picture.

The Irish producers set out to win a younger audience, and changed the look of the show to do it.

There were computer graphics laid over the performances, for the first time. And the scoreboard was no longer a physical object.

Norwegian television wanted the contest to look younger and reach further, and rebranded it. On screen, and in the presenters' mouths, this was "Eurosong '96".

The presenters, Natasja Crone Back and Søren Pilmark, delivered their entire script in rhyming couplets.

For the first time the contest had a slogan. It was "A Modern Fairytale", and the postcards took it literally: each was a well-known fairy story that ended up somewhere in present-day Estonia, with a moral attached.

The interval act tried to move the contest out of the hall.

The organisers drew up four scenarios, from a normal contest to one performed entirely by video link. By February 2021 a normal contest had been ruled out.