Eurovision Song Contest 2025
Basel will host the event next year
Nemo won the ESC 2024 – and thus brought the ESC 2025 to Switzerland.
© imago/TT
The Eurovision Song Contest 2025 will take place in Basel. The Swiss Capital of Culture has prevailed over Geneva.
After Nemo (25, “The Code”) won the ESC in May 2024, it was clear that the music competition would take place next year in the Switzerland. It is now also clear that the country’s third largest city has won the competition as the host venue.
The Eurovision Song Contest final will take place on 17 May 2025 in Basel. Those responsible announced this via Instagram, among other placesAccordingly, the semifinals will be played on site on 13 and 15 May.
“Crossing Borders” in Basel
The announcement clip shows Nemo’s winning moments from May as well as forays through a charismatic mountain world. It also shows retrospective sequences of previous competitions in black and white and snapshots from the modern and cosmopolitan Swiss cultural capital of Basel, located directly behind the German-Swiss border on the Rhine.
Basel surprisingly prevailed against the competition from Geneva. Zurich had already been eliminated from the race for candidates, as “eurovision.de” reported“As a border town with Germany and France, Basel has put its application under the motto ‘Crossing Borders’. Lörrach on the German side was also included in the image film for the application,” reported the organizer.
The venue is the St. Jakobshalle, which has a capacity of 12,000 spectators. As the “Tagesanzeiger” also reported, there will be a public viewing in the adjacent football stadium. But that’s not all: the Steinenvorstadt nightlife mile is to be transformed into a “Eurovision Street” and a stage for local bands will be created on Barfüsserplatz.
The international competition, which was originally called the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson, is being held in the Alpine country for the third time. The very first event took place in Lugano in 1956, and another in Lausanne in 1989.