J’adore Eurovision

Since today is the 70th Eurovision Song Contest final — and the whole spectacle is unfolding in the very city where I live — I feel the occasion deserves a place on my blog. Let me start by confessing that I love Eurovision. And the word love is not used lightly here. It is far more than affection. J’adore Eurovision. I realized the depth of this devotion last year, when I didn’t even like Austria’s song, yet I kept thinking: If Austria wins, Eurovision comes to my doorstep. It was the purest, most unfiltered mixture of local patriotism and selfishness I have ever experienced. That’s the power of this ridiculous, glitter‑covered, always political, and sometimes musically questionable institution: It rearranges your priorities with the force of a small earthquake.

So where does all this love for a loud music competition come from? Because, rationally speaking, I know perfectly well that Eurovision has its issues. The same countries receiving the same predictable support year after year. Smaller nations with smaller budgets barely getting noticed unless they perform a miracle. The way the bookies shape the narrative long before the first note is sung. I’m not blind to any of that.

The more I think about it, the more I believe it has to do with a child who felt so lonely — so profoundly, achingly lonely in the world — that Eurovision became a kind of annual lifeline. It allowed me to dream. Not necessarily of attending the event in the arena (although that certainly has its charm), but of something much simpler and far more intimate: that one day, I wouldn’t have to watch the whole thing by myself. That maybe, at some point in my life, there would be someone sitting next to me on the couch, laughing at the same absurd staging choices, judging the same key changes, and sharing the same ridiculous excitement. Eurovision wasn’t just entertainment; it was a promise that having a real family — the kind who stays awake for something simply because it matters to me — might one day be possible. It was the quiet hope that somewhere in the future, there would be someone who didn’t roll their eyes, who didn’t tell me to turn the volume down, who didn’t treat my joy as an inconvenience. Eurovision carried that dream long before I had the language for it.

In my childhood home, I had to watch Eurovision in near‑silence. I wasn’t permitted to turn up the volume or sing along — any sound risked waking my parents, and waking my parents was a crisis I couldn’t afford myself to trigger. So I cheered for my favorites in whispers, conducting my own private Eurovision in the dark. I mouthed the lyrics, clapped in silence, and perfected the art of celebrating like a spy: all emotion, no noise. Looking back, it’s almost funny — this tiny, devoted fan crouched in front of a glowing screen, treating every key change like a state secret. But at the time, it felt like the only place where I could let myself dream, even if I had to dream quietly.

Since 2004, the year Serbia and Montenegro rejoined Eurovision (and the year I discovered the contest even existed), I haven’t missed a single semifinal or final. Not one. My viewing record is cleaner than my medical file. And the truth is: I genuinely don’t know what would have to happen for me to miss Eurovision. A natural disaster? A blackout? A meteor landing directly on my living room? Even then, I’d probably find a way to stream it on my phone under the rubble. If I ever do miss it, you can be absolutely certain it’s a health emergency — the kind where someone else has confiscated my devices and I’m lying in a hospital bed, protesting weakly while the nurses pretend not to understand the gravity of the situation.

Eurovision is my annual constant, my personal liturgical calendar. And I intend to keep it that way.

Fortunately, I don’t have to watch it alone anymore. I have people in my life who are willing to watch it with me — not just passively, not as background noise while they scroll on their phones, but actively. The kind of people who sit down with intention, who comment on the staging, who gasp at the key changes, who argue passionately about the jury votes as if geopolitical stability depended on them. People who understand that Eurovision is not merely a show but a seasonal emotional condition. And every time I watch it with them, I feel a small, private astonishment: The child who once whispered her cheers in the dark now has a living room of people who may not be true Eurovision enthusiasts, but who choose to pretend they are — for me. It feels like a quiet miracle.

Sometimes I think Eurovision became my first experience of hope — the small, stubborn kind that keeps a lonely child company. Every May, no matter how the rest of the year had gone, I knew there would be three nights when the world felt a little bigger, a little brighter, a little less indifferent. It was a ritual that didn’t require much. Just me, a television screen, and the belief that somewhere out there, millions of people were watching the same thing at the same time. It made the world feel connected long before I ever felt safe enough to connect to anyone in it.

And maybe that’s why my devotion never faded. Eurovision grew up with me — or perhaps I grew up around it — and it became a kind of emotional anchor. Through new countries, new languages, new jobs, and all the quiet reinventions that adulthood demands, Eurovision remained the one constant that didn’t ask anything from me except enthusiasm. It was the annual reminder that joy can be loud even when life is full of sorrow and that sometimes the most meaningful traditions are the ones we invent for ourselves.

But the real miracle — the one I would never take for granted — is that I no longer watch it alone. The child who once whispered her cheers now sits in a room where people gather not because they share her obsession, but because they care about her. They show up, they comment, they laugh, they pretend to be Eurovision experts for three nights a year, and in doing so, they give me something I once thought was reserved for the most privileged: a real family. And every time the opening theme plays, I feel that quiet shift inside me — the recognition that the dream I once had, the simple dream of sharing my enthusiasm with other humans, has already come true.