Eurovision Song Contest
Switzerland will immediately start preparing for the ESC 2025
Nemo celebrates after winning the Eurovision Song Contest final. Next year the final will take place in Switzerland. photo
© Jens Büttner/dpa
After the show is before the show: Less than twelve hours after Nemo’s victory, Switzerland is already planning the next competition. It will be the first ESC in the Alpine country since 1989.
After Nemo’s victory at the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Malmö, preparations are already starting in Switzerland for hosting the competition in 2025. “It is a great artistic and tourism opportunity to show the world what Switzerland is all about, and it is now up to us to take on this challenge together.” said the general director of the SRG media company, Gilles Marchand.
Geneva and Basel have already announced themselves as possible venues. The Palexpo congress center in Geneva, which has space for 15,000 spectators, says it has already submitted an application folder. The ESC organizer EBU (European Broadcasting Union) is also at home in Geneva. Bern and Zurich are also mentioned as venues.
The ESC last took place in Switzerland in 1989, in the Palais de Beaulieu, the landmark exhibition and congress center in Lausanne on Lake Geneva. The year before, Canadian Céline Dion took first place for Switzerland. But this time everything is different: For Dion and her then manager and later husband René Angélil, taking part in the ESC had nothing to do with Switzerland, but only with the career planning of the then 20-year-old, who primarily wanted to conquer the German market. Angélil said this at the arrival press conference after the two returned to Canada immediately after the victory. Nemo (24), on the other hand, is a native Swiss: grew up in Biel and is already known as a dialect rapper in Swiss German.
Nemo currently lives in Berlin. “I love Berlin so much because it is such a creative city that is constantly changing. I have wonderful relationships here,” Nemo told the German Press Agency before the ESC. “It’s a fun city.”
SRG announcement