The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) will take place next year in the Swiss border town of Basel This was decided by the organizers, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
Basel is located directly on the border with Germany and France The city has applied with the motto “Overcoming Borders”. It sees itself and the region as the best example of how borders can become unimportant in the way people live together.
German border region wants to benefit from ESC
The German border region also wants to benefit from the ESC on the border. Lörrach is less than ten kilometers from Basel. The city’s non-partisan mayor, Jörg Lutz, spoke out in favor of the nearby ESC in Basel’s application video. “With the Eurovision Song Contest, we are turning the three-country corner into the 40-country corner,” he said.
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In Lörrach, for example, many guests could stay overnight. In Basel, hotel prices were already high even for simple Accommodations cost several hundred euros per night shot up.
The spectacle will take place in the St. Jakobshalle, which is known for tennis tournaments and other sporting events. It has space for 12,000 people. The show will also be broadcast to the nearby St. Jakob-Park football stadium. There is space for 20,000 people. The city expects the cost to be around 30 to 35 million francs (37 million euros).
Overcoming borders in Basel
The motto is: “Overcoming borders”. Basel has been demonstrating how this works for decades: The city itself borders directly on Germany and France, and the communities in the border triangle work so closely together that residents hardly notice the borders anymore. “The ESC connects and inspires, across all borders,” the city wrote in its application, recommending itself with its “cosmopolitan scene”.
The motto also fits the ESC, which has recently been increasingly affected by political tensions, for example in connection with the Russian war against Ukraine or Israel’s war against the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Nemo brought ESC to Switzerland
The fact that Switzerland would host the event had been the victory of Nemo at the 68th ESC this year in Malmö. In the music competition, public media organizations, mainly from Europe, which are EBU members, compete for the highest honours with a song. The winning country usually hosts the next ESC.
Nemo won with the song “The Code”. The non-binary person, who defines himself as neither man nor woman, addressed his own career path in the song. In the overall ranking based on the votes of the juries in the member countries and the audience, Nemo came first, ahead of Croatia. The German singer Isaak came 12th.
Basel, home to pharmaceutical companies such as Roche and Novartis, is culturally known for its legendary carnival, which has roots dating back to the 14th century. It is a world heritage site. The Fondation Beyeler museum for modern and contemporary art in Riehen near Basel is also internationally renowned.
This is the third ESC for Switzerland: it hosted the first competition in 1956 in Lugano and won with Lys Assia. The next host, however, was Frankfurt. Canadian Céline Dion won for Switzerland for a second time in 1988, thus launching her international career. The following year the competition took place in Lausanne. Germany has won twice so far: Nicole in 1982 with “Ein bisschen Frieden” and Lena Meyer-Landrut in 2010 with “Satellite”.