Eurovision 2023: EBU confirms United Kingdom as the host country
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The EBU has confimred today that United Kingdom's BBC will be the hosting the 67th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine the EBU had previously announced that the contest will not take part in the winning country of 2022 and they started talks with UK's BBC for a potential hosting of the competition. After talks and discussions the United Kingdom and BBC accepted the challenge and will be taking over the hosting of Eurovision 2023.
The BBC will be teaming up with the Ukrainian national broadcaste, UA:PBC, in order to organise the contest to take place on British territory with the intention to showcase during the event multi Ukrainian cultural elements. The official logo of the 2023 edition will be released in due course and will be reflecting the special circumstances under which the specific contest will be taking place.
This will be the fifth time they will be doing it after replacing the Netherlands back in 1960, France in 1963, Monaco in 1972 and Luxembourg in 1974. In addtion they are the host nation for a ninth time maitaining their lead as the country that has hosted the contest most times.
EBU's Eurovision Song Contest Executive Supervisor, Martin Osterdahl stated:
We’re exceptionally grateful that the BBC has accepted to stage the Eurovision Song Contest in the UK in 2023.
The BBC has taken on hosting duties for other winning countries on four previous occasions. Continuing in this tradition of solidarity, we know that next year’s Contest will showcase the creativity and skill of one of Europe’s most experienced public broadcasters whilst ensuring this year’s winners, Ukraine, are celebrated and represented throughout the event.
Mykola Chernotytskyi, the Head of UA PBC's Board commented:
The 2023 Eurovision Song Contest will not be in Ukraine but in support of Ukraine. We are grateful to our BBC partners for showing solidarity with us.
I am confident that together we will be able to add Ukrainian spirit to this event and once again unite the whole of Europe around our common values of peace, support, celebrating diversity and talent.
BBC's General Director Tim Davie said:
It is a matter of great regret that our colleagues and friends in Ukraine are not able to host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. Being asked to host the largest and most complex music competition in the world is a great privilege.
The BBC is committed to making the event a true reflection of Ukrainian culture alongside showcasing the diversity of British music and creativity.
The BBC will now begin the process to find a host city to partner with us on delivering one of the most exciting events to come to the UK in 2023.
The potential host cities
As soon as the EBU announced that they in talks with BBC on hosting the next edition of Eurovision, a number of cities in the UK went on expressing their interest in hosting the competition. Namely a total of 16 cities are vying to host Eurovision 2023:
- Manchester
- London
- Glasgow
- Aberdeen
- Bristol
- Cardiff
- Sheffield
- Leeds
- Nottingham
- Newcastle
- Birmingham
- Brighton
- Liverpool
- Wolverhampton
- Belfast
- Sunderland
However it is uncertain which cities will eventually go forward with an actual bidding proposal for the next contest. BBC will release in the following weeks the list of cities in the bidding race while the hosto city decision is will come out sometime between Ausgust and October.
News Source: EBU
Image: EBU/Corinne Cumming
AUTHORS
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Angelos D.
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