GENEVA — It survived the Cold War, oil crises and Balkan wars, but it will not survive the coronavirus. The Eurovision Song Contest 2020 has been cancelled, the European Broadcasting Union announced on Wednesday — the first time the contest has been called off since it began in 1956.
The 65th edition was to have taken place in Rotterdam in May, after the Netherlands’ victory last year with Duncan Laurence’s “Arcade”. Forty-one countries had selected songs. Organisers had explored a stripped-down version without an audience, but concluded that even that could not be done safely or fairly, with delegations unable to travel and rehearse.
The EBU said it would work with Dutch broadcasters on whether Rotterdam can host in 2021. What happens to this year’s songs is unclear; the contest’s rules would bar them from competing again next year, though broadcasters are lobbying for an exception.
The cancellation is, in cultural terms, among the largest the pandemic has yet caused in Europe. Eurovision draws an annual television audience of around 180 million — more than the Super Bowl — and has become, for many smaller countries, a rare night at the centre of the continental map.
The organisers promised a replacement broadcast, “Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light”, to air on the night the final should have happened. It will honour the 41 songs that will now never compete. The phrase the contest needed least this year was the one it got: nul points.
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