Eurovision Song Contest 2025 to be staged in Basel

Swiss performer Nemo won the 2024 competition Keystone

The Swiss city of Basel will stage the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in May 2025. Geneva's bid was unsuccessful, Swiss public broadcaster SRG announced on Friday.

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The main venue will be Basel’s St Jakobshalle. The costs for the ESC are estimated by the Basel government at between CHF30 million and CHF35 million.

The city will be in the spotlight of millions of people: During the three live television shows from Malmö, Sweden, in 2024, 163 million people watched the music performances, including almost 800,000 from Switzerland alone.

+ Who is Eurovision winner Nemo?

The ESC is returning to Switzerland for the first time in 36 years following Nemo’s surprise victory last spring. In 1988, Céline Dion won the contest for Switzerland with the song ‘Ne partez pas sans moi’ in the Irish capital Dublin, after which the event was held at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne the following year.

+ Switzerland at Eurovision: the colourful hits and misses

On 24 May 1956, the first ‘Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson’ – as the competition was still called at the time – took place in the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano.

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

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