With its 166 million viewers in 2025 globally, Eurovision claims the title of “largest live musical event” in the world, united by music. Does this marketing slogan have geopolitical meaning? Beyond the futility of kitsch, the derisory controversies and the lightness of the commercial ditty, what constitutes Eurovision as a “monster event”, in the words of Pierre Nora?
Eurovision: a shimmering enigma
The 70e edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, the final of which takes place this May 16, at the Wiener Stadthalle, did not choose its host city by chance: the privilege of organizing the competition goes to the audiovisual group which won the competition the previous year. But what better setting for this anniversary than Vienna, imperial capital, cradle of European musical modernity, from Haydn to Schoenberg, from Burgtheater At the State Opera? It is also a conference city par excellence, the one which, in 1815, had already tried to put into music the unity of the continent through spectacle and negotiation. This formula is also attributed to the Prince de Ligne, Marshal of the army of the Holy Empire: “The Congress does not advance, it dances”. The Wiener Stadthalle remained full, despite a record number of country boycotts this year.
The paradox is thunderous: never has the competition aroused so much political, moral and financial controversy, and yet, never has it attracted so many spectators and subscribers on social networks. This hiatus between the contestation of the symbol and popular interest, which is still real, is not anecdotal: it deserves analysis in itself.
Despite its fame and futility, Eurovision, in many respects, remains an enigma. How can we understand that a competition claiming from the beginning to be apolitical in principle has become one of the most politicized objects on the international scene? How can we explain that this multilingual competition, without an obvious geographical base, “provincial” in the sense that Dipesh Chakrabarty would give to this term (a decentralized, partial Europe, impossible to reduce to a single story), resists the onslaught of formats private as The Voice or American Idolbut also to the competing ambitions of a Russian Intervision (resurrected in 2025) or a Water Cube Cup Chinese? Against all expectations, at a time when Europe fears for its very existence, Eurovision remains the world reference for radio hook, not despite its contradictions, but on the contrary because of this combination of antitheses.
This resilience calls for perspective.
In a world where international relations are now punctuated by a proliferation of “giga-events”, such as institutional summits (G7, G20, BRICS), sports competitions (Olympics, World Cups), economic forums (Davos, Valdaï) or even military exercises (NATO, OCS), what makes an event become a the event  ?
Never has the competition aroused so much political, moral and financial controversy, and yet, it has never attracted so many spectators.
Cyrille Bret, Florent Parmentier
The question mobilizes distinct intellectual traditions, which each shed light on the event in their own way: the phenomenology of the event in Paul RicÅ“ur, who defines it as a rupture in the continuity of time, an emergence which reconfigures the narrative and obliges us to reinterpret the past; the sociology of collective mobilizations, which analyzes the event as a moment of crystallization of resources, political opportunities and frameworks of interpretation allowing collective action to emerge or, from a memorial perspective, “places of memory”; » by Pierre Nora, these symbolic spaces where a community recognizes itself, projects itself and tells itself about itself, because they condense affects, stories and shared representations.
Some “giga-events” disappear as soon as they are over, without leaving a trace in the collective memory, while others, on the contrary, stand out as structuring milestones in shared history. Under what condition does an event produce this second effect, that of memory sedimentation and collective recognition? And is Eurovision, in itself, more of a unifying ritual or simple periodic entertainment?
These questions are neither only intellectual nor exclusively commercial. It is to the articulation between logics of attention, construction of collective identity and competition for influence that this article intends to respond, by making Eurovision not an object of cultural curiosity, but a revealer of the dynamics at work in the contemporary international system. that it can be considered as a “soundtrack” of European construction, namely as that which accompanies, reveals and stages the geopolitical, social and identity transformations of Europe since 1956.Â
What does the competition tell us, from Vienna, about Europe’s capacity to bring about an event, that is to say a common experience, contested but shared? Dividing but unifying? This is the enigma of Eurovision.
A bonus for seniority: Eurovision as a pan-European ritual
Like the God bless you by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, whose first measures have accompanied the launch of Eurovision since 1956, the competition has built an immediately recognizable sound identity, that of a ceremony, a rite, an invariable restart, spring after spring. The first explanation for the success of Eurovision is also the simplest: the duration. Seventy editions, almost uninterrupted continuity since 1956a diffusion which preceded the European institutional construction itself, since the competition is older than the Treaty of Rome (1957). This longevity is deeply meaningful. Eurovision does not make an event by its uniqueness or its exceptionality, in the way of a break in the ordinary course of things, but precisely the opposite, by its regular and ritual repetition. It is an event, in the Durkheimian sense of the term: a collective ceremony which, by reproducing itself, creates cohesion and memory. Each edition summons the previous ones, and it is the accumulation which creates the meaning.
This continuity obviously owes a lot to a remarkable capacity to adapt to Zeitgeist European. From the outset, “Like the European Union and the United Nations, it was part of a broader attempt to create links between countries through culture and shared experiences.”. But Eurovision is not always content to follow the spirit of the times: it sometimes precedes it. The competition was able to navigate the Cold War, decolonization, enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, debates on gender identity and minority rights, not by ignoring them, but by absorbing them. This was sometimes done clumsily, often with a delay, but always remaining readable for a continental audience.. Sometimes, on the contrary, the music becomes prophetic Â: the victory of Dana International in 1998, representative of Israel and the first transgender artist to win the competition, preceded and perhaps accompanied an evolution of European sensitivities on gender issues which would only find its full political expression once decade later. In this sense, Eurovision functions sometimes as a relatively faithful mirror of Europe and sometimes as its leading indicator: it records the tensions, aspirations and controversies of the moment, and restores them in a musical and spectacular form accessible to as many people as possible. When he doesn’t simply pass them over in silence.
Eurovision does not make an event by its uniqueness or its exceptionality, in the way of a break in the ordinary course of things, but precisely the opposite, by its regular and ritual repetition.
Cyrille Bret, Florent Parmentier
Seniority and adaptability do not completely resolve the Eurovision enigma because the competition also has all the characteristics of an outdated, kitsch, even out-of-date cultural object. It is the direct heir of the Trente Glorieuses, at a time when few households had a television at home, and a mode of entertainment that the digital age seemed to have definitively condemned: live television, watched as a family, at a set time, on a common station. What an anachronism! It is “provincial”, in the most literal sense, because it is populated by “small states”, multiple folklores, minority languages, aesthetics which sometimes seem to emerge from a Europe that we thought was gone. Its very geography resists any rationalization: ultimately, what is a Europe without shores that includes Israel, Australia, Armenia and Azerbaijan?
We must therefore be wary of an overly convenient explanation based solely on the seniority bonus. It is understood that history and continuity are necessary conditions, but not sufficient. Other demonstrations, despite their age, have disappeared, or have never managed to cross the threshold of collective recognition.
In this respect, Intervision, which experienced a rebirth in September 2025, perhaps offers the most direct illustration. Conceived in 1965 within the framework of the Soviet bloc as a competing antithesis of the European competition, it was based on a strong institutional logic, a coherent geographical area and a comparable repetition; and yet, it left no lasting imprint in the memory of the audiences concerned. Intervision never managed to transcend its propagandistic function, of opposition to Western music deemed “decadent”, to become a shared cultural experience: instrument of soft power Soviet, it remained prisoner of the state logic which had generated it, incapable of arousing the collective identification that Eurovision generates. And it is not certain that its new version, of which a second edition should take place in the fall, leaves an indelible mark in the cultural landscape of the “global South”. Longevity creates the conditions for the event; but in any case, it does not guarantee it. Therefore, we must look elsewhere for what transforms an event into a shared experience.
Eurovision, echo chamber of the din of the world
If longevity explains the roots of Eurovision, it does not account for its contemporary vitality. And its new shoots of sap. It is a second property that must be mentioned here: plasticity. Eurovision lasts because it bends without breaking, because it is, structurally, an empty form, sufficiently welcoming to absorb radically different contents depending on the times, circumstances and balance of power.
This plasticity is part of a favorable geopolitical context.
The contemporary international scene is crossed by two converging dynamics. On the one hand, a generalized competition for visibility and attention, where each power, each coalition, each cause seeks to capture a gaze saturated with information; and, on the other hand, rivalries of stories, where it is no longer just a question of acting, but of signifying and rallying audiences to these meanings. In this double game, Eurovision constitutes a prime target. Its audience reach, its symbolic prestige and its capacity to generate collective emotion make it a vector of influence that powers, whether state or not, have learned not to neglect. Whether it is Israeli cultural diplomacyAzerbaijani ambitions for visibility during the Baku edition in 2012, or even attempts at nationalist recovery of this or that voting result, the competition is constantly worked on from the outside by logics which go beyond it.
Because Eurovision is sufficiently plastic to become the receptacle of competing stories. It conveys changing collective emotions: continental solidarity, assumed kitsch, national pride, the demand for identity, without ever allowing itself to be reduced to one of them. Its popularity is fueled by controversies, whether futile or fundamental: quarrels over televoting and its supposed geopolitical biases, controversies over the participation of a country at war (Russia, Israel), debates over the representation of minorities…. Basically, these controversies do not weaken it definitively; on the contrary, they nourish it. Each scandal is a new opportunity to mobilize attention, to replay belonging, to reopen the debate on what Europe is, or should be. Television’s emotions fuel its success, from condescending curiosity to self-righteous indignation and from overplayed euphoria to shameful boredom.
Eurovision lasts because it bends without breaking, because it is, structurally, an empty form, welcoming enough to absorb radically different contents.
Cyrille Bret, Florent Parmentier
Added to this plasticity is a capacity for continuous modernization which testifies to real institutional intelligence. The European Broadcasting Union has been able to evolve the formats, integrate the public vote, invest in digital platforms, adapt the staging to the codes of global entertainment, while preserving the identity markers of the competition, these rituals of continuity which ensure the recognition of an edition to the other. Eurovision has thus succeeded in what few institutions manage to accomplish: persisting in its identity while renewing itself in its forms.
However, here again we must be wary of an overly mechanical explanation. Receptive passivity and formal plasticity do not constitute, in themselves, a guarantee of survival. Many events have presented the same properties, without establishing themselves permanently in the collective memory: they absorbed the controversies of their time, generated emotion, mobilized competing stories, and yet had no tomorrow. Plasticity is a condition of resilience, without being a sufficient cause. What distinguishes Eurovision from these inconsequential events is perhaps less its ability to reflect the world than the rarer ability to give it a stage, that is to say a space where European contradictions can be played out, literally, in front of an audience. Eurovision is a privileged echo chamber of the continent’s emotions, shared on the same stage.
The fountain of youth of Eurovision
The analysis would be incomplete if it limited itself to making Eurovision a simple passive receptacle of the forces that pass through it. Because the competition is not only influenced by the Zeitgeist: he himself influences the course of events, certainly to a modest extent. It is this active dimension, this capacity to produce effects on the societies which watch it, which ultimately establishes its status as an event in the full sense of the term, no longer only as a spectacle undergone, but as a constituent experience.
The first of these capacities is the oldest and, undoubtedly, the most remarkable: that of bringing people together, even fleetingly and on the basis of multiple misunderstandings. Eurovision brought together Europeans whom history had pitted against each other, firstly the nations that had emerged devastated from the Second World War, for whom the competition constituted from 1956 a symbolic space of reconciliation through culture; then the countries of the two blocs, at a time when the Iron Curtain seemed impervious to all traffic; finally, Northern and Southern Europe, Eastern and Western Europe, which the economic crises and political fractures of recent decades have regularly threatened to fracture. This function of continental seam does not arise from institutional rhetoric: it is observed in the very structures of voting, in the diasporic affinities which link dispersed communities to their countries of origin, in the regional blocs which draw, week after week, an affective map of Europe, which treaties cannot produce.
The second asset of the competition concerns intergenerational dialogue.
Contrary to popular belief which would make it a nostalgic heritage of the baby boom generations, Eurovision has largely succeeded in renewing its audiences. Commercial innovation and presence on social networks have stimulated societal creativity. Each generation projects its own codes, its own demands, its own ironies and mixed sincerities. This transmission is not passive, it is, on the contrary, active, disputed, constantly reinvented. The competition functions here as a transitional object between generations, a ground for identity negotiation as well as emotional sharing.
Eurovision brought together Europeans whom history had opposed.
Cyrille Bret, Florent Parmentier
The last reason for the success of Eurovision over time is due to the evolution of the emotional register itself. Born in the 1950s under the sign of sentimental ditties and light entertainment, Eurovision has gradually broadened its thematic spectrum to welcome works dealing with exile, freedom, the absurd, gender identity, collective mourning and the world of work. This migration towards more serious registers or more complex was, against all expectations, not at the expense of accessibility. Indeed, we can argue that it has on the contrary enriched the emotional palette of the competition, allowing it to reach audiences and experiences that the initial song could not achieve. In this sense, Eurovision has accomplished what few cultural formats succeed in: growing old without becoming heavy, becoming more complex. without becoming elitist.
It is this triple capacity, to unite beyond historical divisions, to cross generations, to evolve its emotional registers, which establishes the legitimacy of Eurovision to claim the status of a lasting event. Not an event in the sense of irruption and rupture, but in the sense, perhaps more demanding, of a living institution: a collective form which reproduces itself by transforming itself, and which, in doing so, says something essential about the capacity of Europeans to recognize themselves in a common experience.
Constantly drawing new strength from an impure fountain of youth (commercial, political, emotional…), the Eurovision Song Contest endures because it constantly renews itself to fulfill its unifying vocation.
From ditty to contemporary geopolitics
After 70 years of existence, the Eurovision Song Contest appears less as a cultural curiosity and a commercial success, than as a textbook case for the theory of international relations.
It in fact brings together the fundamental characteristics of what we could call the accomplished international event: repetition without which there is no memory, but a repetition which does not exclude evolution; ritualization without which there is no collective recognition, but a ritualization which does not prohibit innovation; finally, the multiplicity of national, regional and diasporic identities which are expressed there, without this plurality dissolving the unity of the project. It is this productive tension between permanence and transformation, between diversity and coherence, which distinguishes the event which lasts from the manifestation which exhausts itself. The Same and the Other, combining over the long term of a now ancient institution.
This annual event also bears a distinctive mark, which globalization has not erased: its Europeanness. This cannot be reduced to a geography, even if it is as extensible and distorting as that of the competition. It is due to specific cultural properties that neither globish triumphant nor the standardization of global entertainment formats have succeeded in dissolving. The fluid multilingualism of the competition, where French, Portuguese, Ukrainian or Icelandic coexist without an imposed hierarchy, constitutes in itself a remarkable anomaly in a media landscape dominated by English.. Even more profoundly, the humor, derision and self-criticism which have run through the competition since its origins give it an irreducibly European tone: faced with the great seriousness of imperial events (investiture ceremonies, parades military, summits), Eurovision maintains an ironic distance from itself which is a form of political maturity. Mocking one’s own solemnity is perhaps the European way of asserting that one does not need to impose it.
It is in this sense that Eurovision goes beyond its own case to become a matrix of reflection on international events which refuse to remain without a future.
It teaches that the sustainability of an event cannot be decreed: it is built, through patient sedimentation, in the articulation between a solid institutional form and a capacity to let societies take hold of it, to contest it, to reinvent it. The events that persist are not those which seek to control their meaning, but rather those which accept to partially lose control for the benefit of the audiences who bring them to life. In this sense, Eurovision is not only an object of analysis: it is, for anyone who questions the making of international events, a mirror and a warning.
At a time when powers are competing to produce “giga-events” capable of capturing global attention, the lesson of Vienna is simple, and difficult to imitate: seventy years of presence cannot be bought any more than they are decree.
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