The seven cities in the running to welcome Eurovision crowds next year have been revealed and London has been officially ruled out of the competition.
Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield are officially in the running to host Eurovision 2023.
London is notably missing from the list, likely on account of conscious effort to move events away from the capital. While London has its fair share of big venues, other events would need to be cancelled and moved in order to accommodate the singing competition.
Sam Ryder
The BBC has laid out the criteria on which the seven remaining cities will be judged on:
- Having a suitable venue and sufficient space to deliver the requirements of the Song Contest.
- The commitment that can be made by a city or region to hosting the event, including the financial contribution.
- The strength of the cultural offer which includes off-screen local and regional activity as well as showcasing Ukrainian culture and music.
- And alignment with the BBC’s strategic priorities as a public service broadcaster, such as providing value to all audiences and supporting the creative economy in the UK.
The BBC said the shortlist was created based on the respective cities’ ability to show they have “the capacity, capability and experience to host an event of this scale and complexity”.
According to their statement, the BBC’s process was “heavily weighted towards demonstrating past experience in hosting major international events, as well as being able to demonstrate their credentials in hosting a celebration of contemporary music”.
The UK came second at this year’s competition with Sam Ryder’s performance of ‘Spaceman’, but will host next year’s competition after the winning country, Ukraine, was deemed unable to safely host due to the on-going conflict with Russia.
Kalush Orchestra are the current champions of Eurovision.
It’s not a small feat to host the Eurovision. The event would see approximately 10,000 people descend on the chosen city and it would need to be able to accommodate another 2,000 delegates on top of that.
We won’t find out until this autumn which city will be victorious. BBC and Eurovision will cooperate to choose the decided location. Glasgow is currently the bookies’ favourite, closely followed by Birmingham.
