Six on Stage Blog

  • Let’s meet the 2025 jurors

    As is now traditional, the names of the jurors of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest were revealed following the Grand Final. So, as is now traditional, let’s see who they were.

    There were 184 jurors this year, 5 from each country taking part in the Contest, except for Estonia, who had 4 (presumably because of last-minute unavailability).

    Of those 184, 24 had been jurors at least once before. Four of them had been jurors twice before: Croatia’s Monika Lelas Halambek (also their spokesperson in 2019); San Marino’s Fabrizio Raggi; Serbia’s Ivana Peters (writer of their 2016 entry); and Sweden’s Anna Charlotta Gunnarson. By far the most experienced was Michael Cederberg, also from Sweden, who was on his sixth go, having been a juror in 2009, 2010, 2014, 2017 and 2022 – twice as Chair.

    Previous artists comprised 13 of this year’s jurors (hopefully they didn’t go to dinner together). They were Spain’s Anabel Conde; Estonia’s Ott Lepland and Elina Nechayeva; Luxembourg’s 1971 entrant Monique Melsen; Željko Vukčević from Montenegro’s D mol; Serbia’s Bojana Stamenov; Eva Boto and Ana Soklič from Slovenia; Ochman from Poland; Andrew Lambrou, who represented Cyprus, and Simone Dow from the band Voyager on Australia’s jury; and Tural from Azerbaijan’s duo TuralTuranX.

    Broadcasters often recruit jurors for their national final artists and 2025 was no exception, with at least 10 performers taking part as jurors. These were Aidan Cassar from Malta; Mia Negovetić from Croatia; Theo (formerly Theoz) from Sweden; Iris from Ladybug and Reidun Sæther from Norway; Mel Ömana from Spain; Bjarni Arason from Iceland; Jon Vitezič from Slovenia; Vasilisa Subotic from Germany; and Simon from Armenia.

    (Update: Six on Stage national final data is patchy beyond the last couple of years so thanks to Martin Faulkner for pointing out that Carolin Fortenbacher was also a previous national finalist – and only a few votes short of being in the entrant – for Germany in 2008.)

    Of the remaining jurors, a number have previous connections to Eurovision. Danish juror Mads Enggaard Jørgensen has been a Viewing Room Producer for several Contests, as well as staging performances for Azerbaijan and Denmark and singing backing vocals a couple of times.

    Armenia’s Lilit Navasardyan has written two of her countries’ entries and provided backing vocals for one of those, LoveWave, in 2016.

    And as well as being a house dancer for Melodifestivalen, Sweden’s Kenny Lantz has danced at Eurovision for Sweden, Switzerland and Cyprus. In 2024, he was on stage helping to operate Nemo‘s spinning disc!

  • The spokes with the most

    Two of this year’s jury spokespeople have risen from joint 8th to joint 7th in the list of those who have presented their country’s scores most often.

    Loukas Hamatsos gave Cyprus’s scores for the 12th time, having first done so way back in 2000, while Andri Xhahu made it the 12th Content in a row where he has given the scores for Albania. They tie with Solveig Herlin who gave Finland’s scores almost every year from 1982 to 1996.

    They still have some way to go to reach the top of the leaderboard:

    1. Colin Berry (UK 24 times)
    2. Michel Stocker (Switzerland 20 times)
    3. Sverre Christopherson (Norway 18 times)

    2024’s spokespeople were made up of a few groups. A handful haven’t had a Eurovision role before, but almost all had at least a Eurovision-adjacent connection.

    Returning spokespeople

    10 of the 36 spokespeople (Netherlands having decided not to present their votes) had performed the role before.

    In addition to Loukas and Andri, these included Lorella Flego (4 times for Slovenia, including this year), Ingvild Helljesen (4 times for Norway, having stepped in at the last minute this year), Philipp Hansa (5 times in a row for Austria), and Radka Rosická (her 5th time for Czechia).

    Ina Müller gave the scores for Germany for a second time – that’s once less than one-letter-different Tina Müller has given them from Denmark.

    National finalists

    Three spokespeople took part in their countries’ national selections for 2024. These included Matt Blxck from Malta and Denise Bertozzi who took part in San Marino’s selection as Kida.

    Previous entrants

    As has become traditional, a number of former competing artists returned to give their countries’ scores. There were 15 this year, with three Contest winners among them.

    Five spokespeople had taken part in 2023 – Mimicat, Brunette, Danny from Voyager, Andrejs from Sudden Lights and Monika Linkytė.

    Konstrakta returned from 2022, having also taken part in Serbia’s national final this year.

    The returning winners were Jamala from Ukraine, Paul Harrington, who won for Ireland 30 years ago this year and was a juror in 2009, and Helena Paparizou, who was previous Greece’s spokesperson in 2015.

    An honourable mention here also to Poland’s Viki Gabor, who won the Junior Eurovision Song Contest for them in 2019.