Eurovision turns its back on English

For the first time, more than half of countries have voluntarily chosen to sing in a language other than English at Eurovision - up from a fifth just five years ago. Why is this happening now?

As much as the European Broadcasting Union claims that it isn’t, we all know that the Eurovision Song Contest held each year since 1956 is very political - and no year was that more evident than in 2024. The EBU’s ban on Russia’s participation after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 crossed a Rubicon of mainstreaming politics in the contest. It later exposed the EBU to allegations of hypocrisy when they said last year that Eurovision is a contest between national broadcasters, not countries, and Israel’s broadcaster cannot be held responsible for the actions of its government. Why then was Russia’s broadcaster held responsible for the actions of President Putin? The answers from the EBU were intellectual contortions worthy of Cirque de Soleil.

While the controversy over Israel’s participation seems to have dissipated this year (all we’ve had is a limp request for a debate on the subject from the Spanish broadcaster), it is clear that Eurovision is now simultaneously the most watched and the most political it has ever been in its history. It is the most-watched annual live television event in the world, with more viewers than the Superbowl, Grammys and Oscars combined. It peaked at 204 million in 2016, and since then has hovered around 160 million since the loss of the Russian and Chinese audience (China was airing it, while not participating, until it lost the rights to do so because it blacked out a gay kiss in an Irish performance). But before the Russia and Israel controversies, the most sensitive political issue in Eurovision tended to be about language. And in that respect, this year’s trends are a fascinating development given the geopolitical context.

The Eurovision language wars

When the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956, organisers had not thought to specify any policy for what language the acts could sing in. It was just assumed that each country would sing in their own language. That changed in 1965, when Sweden showed up to the contest with an entry in English. France was not amused. They convinced the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union, which runs the contest, to impose a rule requiring each country's entry to be in an official language of that country. Otherwise, they argued, English would erode the contest's cultural legitimacy.

That language restriction lasted until 1973, when a convenient absence of the French representative at an EBU meeting enabled Sweden to convince the others to nix the rule. That resulted in a string of English-language winners, including ABBA's Waterloo from Sweden in 1974. By 1978 France had had enough, and the EBU was convinced to re-impose the language restriction. And so it remained, until 1999. Only Ireland, Malta and the UK were allowed to sing in English. Ireland chose to sing in Irish only once, in 1972. Malta sung in Maltese a few times in the 70s, but then switched over to English every year.

What finally convinced France to give in and drop its opposition to countries singing in a language of their choosing? An almost uninterrupted series of wins from Ireland and the UK from 1992 to 1997. In the 1990s Eurovision ratings were in the toilet, the song contest looked completely out of touch and disconnected to what Europeans were hearing on the radio. At that time most would have concluded that the contest was not long for this world - as Silvio Berlusconi did when he pulled Italy out of the contest in 1994 assuming it was about to disappear anyway (Italy did not re-enter the contest until 2011, immediately after Berlusconi was ousted from power). It was clear major changes were needed to make Eurovision modern and relevant. And so, after years of trying to convince France, two major rule changes happened in 1999: countries no longer had to sing in their own language, and they no longer had to use a live orchestra. Following their string of wins in the 1990s, the UK and Ireland have never won again since their competitors have been also allowed to sing in English.

Sweden, which had for three decades been wishing to sing in English, was finally vindicated. In 1999, they won the first free-language song contest with 'Take Me to Your Heaven'. As you can see from the chart above, the pent-up desire to sing in English exploded, with 60% opting to sing in English the first year it was allowed followed by 70% in 2000 (in 1999, some countries such as Germany had already chosen their song when the language restriction was lifted). In the two decades from 1999 to 2017 only one non-English song won the contest - Serbia's 'Molitva' in 2006.

The low point (or high point, depending on your perspective) came in 2016 when only two of the 39 non-English-speaking participating countries chose to sing entirely in their native language. Even France and Italy, which were stalwarts insisting on singing in their own language every year during all this time, had choruses in English that year.

Use English if you’re in it to win it

There were two things motivating this trend. One was that because the English language dominates Europe’s radio waves, it was thought that a ‘modern, radio-friendly song’ (which is what Eurovision was trying to convert to in the 2000s) needs to be in English. Each European country tends to only have two types on songs on the radio: songs in their own language (to varying degrees depending on the cultural output of that country) and songs in English from the US/UK. Europeans generally do not listen to their neighbours’ pop songs that are not in English, unless they are translated into their language (witness how most successful Italian pop songs are translated into Spanish for that market). English is the lingua franca of Europe politically, commercially and culturally. It is not just the English language that united Europeans into a common cultural bloc. As I’ve written before, the popular culture that unites Europeans is American.

The second thing motivating the English song choices was the belief that viewers needed to understand the lyrics of a song in order to connect with it and vote for it. The proportion of Eurovision viewers who can understand English is estimated at 70% (a figure that rose after Russia, Belarus and Turkey left the contest). That’s the reason that the national hosts always speak in English for two decades now (which creates the weird legacy situation of Graham Norton needlessly speaking over them from the booth for the UK broadcast). A song could have very clever lyrics, but if all the viewers who can vote for that song don’t understand them (viewers can’t vote for their own country), they disappear into the ether. If you sing in English, you know that three-quarters of the viewers will understand what you’re saying.

This was a live debate in Italy in 2017 when Francesco Gabbani’s song “Westerners’ Karma” won San Remo, making it Italy’s Eurovision entry. It won mostly because of the clever lyrics criticising Western superficial embrace of Eastern philosophies to relieve their own anxiety. When it won, the song’s writer reportedly wanted it translated into English but was overuled by Italian broadcaster RAI. Though the bookies had predicted it would win the contest, it ended up coming in a disappointing 6th. This was attributed to the fact that the song’s appeal relied on the lyrics rather than the melody or staging, and the people who could vote for Italy don’t understand Italian (countries can’t vote for their own entry).

But that narrative was complicated by the fact that the song that won that year also wasn’t in English - Salvador Sobral’s “Amar Pelos Dois” for Portugal. The win of a non-English song for the first time in 11 years (and by a huge margin) shocked Eurovision observers. The song was the opposite of everything that most people had come to associate with Eurovision. It was a quiet ballad, performed with almost no staging - just Sobral singing alone under a spotlight. So why did Sobral’s non-English song succeed while Gabbani’s failed? For the same reason that Molitva had won in 2006 - the melody of the song is so evocative that an understanding of the lyrics isn’t needed. I remember being told in 2006 by Serbo-Croatian speakers that the lyrics to Molitva are actually quite dumb and it was better that viewers couldn’t understand them. One friend maintains that Molitva wouldn’t have won if it were in English because the hokey lyrics would have been irritating in combination with the dramatic performance.

So the thinking up till now has been this: the choice to enter a non-English song is made to showcase a culture or language at the expense of actually competing in the contest. A non-English song has to be so exceptional melodically to do well at Eurovision and most songs do not meet this high bar. And so entering a non-English song is basically forfeiting the competition, the thinking went. But clearly, this thinking is changing - particularly after the astonishing developments in 2021 when the top three songs were all not in English, with the winner Italy’s Måneskin using Eurovision as a springboard for global success including even in the US (with songs in English though, I would point out!). Ukraine also won the contest in 2022 with a song in Ukrainian, although I would argue this was a strange year with nakedly political voting so can be discounted in terms of the language trend. The second-place song (which many considered the de-facto winner) was in English from the UK, which is why the contest was in Liverpool the following year.

Just like in 2006, the win of non-English songs in 2017 and 2021 prompted a spike in the number of non-English songs the following year but then a drop again the year after. What’s interesting, as I’ll discuss below, is that the 2025 spike isn’t a response to a non-English win or a change in voting rules, as was the case for all previous spikes. There’s something else going on here.

By the way, I discussed the history of the language conflict in the song contest with former New York Times correspondent James Kanter on an EU Scream podcast episode last year.

2025: why less English now?

This year has seen the highest number of non-English entries in the song contest since language freedom was introduced in 1999. 22 of the 27 entered songs are at least partially in a language other than English. For the purposes of the chart above, I only counted songs that are chiefly not in English - therefor I don’t count this year’s entries for Israel and Estonia. But even with those removed, it means that 57% of this year’s songs are chiefly not in English (or two-thirds if you include Israel and Estonia).

This year also contains some interesting uses of other countries’ non-English languages. The Dutch song is in French, one of six (!?!) songs this year with French in them (despite Belgium’s song being completely in English!). Sweden has chosen to voluntarily not sing in English for the first time ever, with an entry in the dialect of Swedish spoken in Finland. The Finnish song has a chorus in German. The Estonian entry is half in Italian. The controversial Israeli entry (the singer is a survivor of the 7 October attacks) is in English, Hebrew and French. The Polish song is in Polish and Old Slavic (a jab at Russia?). The German song is entirely in German, which like Sweden marks the first time that has happened in the language freedom era.

The French are having an “I told you so” moment right now with European defence, having warned about Europe surrendering sovereignty to the American protectorate. Are they also having an “I told you so” moment with Eurovision and American cultural imperialism? Have European broadcasters suddenly become sympathetic to France’s argument that the use of English by non-English-speaking countries at Eurovision is cultural treason? Have these choices been made this year because Europeans are at this moment repulsed by America and, by extension, America’s culture and language?

There is, of course, a risk of over-interpreting these developments. It is just a song contest after all. That countries are feeling more confident to enter songs that aren’t in English right now is mostly a result of the wins for non-English songs in 2017 and 2021 (and the general higher scores for non-English songs, such as Käärijä’s “Cha Cha Cha” which won the popular televote in 2023 but was edged into second place by the juries (who make up 50% of the vote result). France came fourth last year with a song in French by the pop star Slimane. France’s general high scores lately have spurred a surge in interest in the contest in France, where viewers had largely tuned out during the English-dominated decades from 2000 to 2020.

But if you look at the chart above, you can see that previous spikes were in reaction to specific developments in the contest. The 2007 spike came after the winner in Serbo-Croatian. The 2012 spike came after the rules were changed from having a 100% public televote to adding a 50% jury vote (the thinking was that juries were more open to voting for songs not in English - something that didn’t turn out to be true hence why it was another short-lived spike). The 2018 spike came after the winner in Portuguese. The 2022 spike came after the winner in Italian.

But last year’s winner was in English. The previous year’s winner was in English. The 2022 winner, as I mentioned above, was an unusual situation so I don’t think anyone would have drawn any linguistic conclusions. So really, we’re talking about a situation where a non-English song hasn’t won in four years. And there hasn’t been any recent change in the voting rules that would make people think non-English songs suddenly have a better chance of winning. So why has the number spiked this year to the highest (voluntary) proportion ever?

From my vantage point, I don’t see how recent geopolitical developments could be unrelated. The image of the United States, and by extension its culture and language, has taken a big hit over the past six months. The Financial Times published an article on Friday with some shocking statistics about how much European tourism to the US has dropped over the past three months. This years entries were chosen in the three months following the US election. It is easy to see how a revulsion with American culture could have translated into an antipathy toward ‘America’s language’.

Don’t be ashamed of English

We’ll see in 2026 if this trend continues (if the global situation even allows us to have a contest). The reality of course is that English isn’t America’s language. It is a language indigenous to Europe, and the use of ‘EuroEnglish’ in continental Europe has become so widespread that it has become Europe’s political, commercial and cultural lingua franca. But clearly, not everyone in Europe has been enthusiastic about that. The French have resisted this development for decades and they have long made the argument that governments should impose restrictions on the use of English in Europe. That’s why France imposes a limit on how much English can be used on their radio and television (the Toubon Law setting a minimum quota for French content). This view has been appealing both to the left and right in Europe, and Giorgia Meloni’s government has been imposing laws limiting the use of English in Italy over the past three years.

The Dutch, Poles, Swedes, Greeks and Germans may see English as a practical European tool to communicate with other Europeans, but the French, Spanish and Italians don’t share the same enthusiasm for embracing this lingua franca. Personally, I fall on the Northern/Eastern side of this debate and not on the Southern side. The fact that more than half of EU citizens speak English proficiently should be embraced as an opportunity for building European federalism, because there is no other alternative for a common tongue waiting in the wings. It can be a tool not only for political union but also cultural union. The use of English in Eurovision saved the contest from collapse in the 2000s and propelled it into being the only significant cultural output that Europe produces as a whole. It is now something that eclipses any live television event America produces, and it is being emulated around the world. Europeans should be proud of that, and they should not be ashamed of the fact that the use of English helped it get there.

It is understandable that some songs are better performed in English and some songs are better performed in the native language of the country. The problem is that these decisions have not been taken based on the song, but rather on the degree of linguistic chauvinism in the country (as the Italy 2017 situation illustrated). These are political decisions, rather than musical decisions, and we can see that in the way that non-English songs have come in waves. It makes perfect sense that, given the geopolitical situation, European countries are less likely to want to sing in English right now. But it also makes sense that English should continue to be the most-used language in Eurovision and, at most, could stay at around half of entries from this point forward. English does not belong to America, it belongs to the world.

By the way, in case anyone is interested, my favourite song this year is a non-English one - “Ich Komme” by Erika Vikman from Finland (a fellow Finnodisco artist with Käärijä with whom she collaborates). The lyrics are hilariously subversive, but apparently they’re OK since they’re not in English (the Maltese dirty lyrics were banned by the EBU because the Maltese word kant sounds like the c-word in English). I also love the way the song builds to a crescendo, as does its subject matter!