Six on Stage Blog

Tag: jurors

  • 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!

  • Who’s had the most Eurovision roles?

    There are lots of roles at the Eurovision Song Contest and plenty of people have taken on more than one – not least every songwriter who’s delivered their own song on stage. But who has performed the most roles at Eurovision?

    First, some caveats. We’re talking about people representing their country. There are lots of roles at Eurovision beyond this – in TV production, website and social content, stage management, etc. But when it comes to countries’ participation, Six on Stage identifies the following specific roles:

    • Lead artist – the credited singer or group for an entry
    • Backing performer – dancer, backing vocalist, puppeteer – anyone performing an entry on stage who’s not the lead artist
    • Songwriter – you’ll see this broken down into composers and lyricists on song pages (and where that information isn’t available we list credited writers as both), but for this analysis we’re considering the role of writer as a single one
    • Jury member – someone who has been a member of a country’s professional jury
    • Spokesperson – someone who has announced the country’s scores (or, in the current format, their jury’s 12 points)
    • Host – slightly different as it’s not linked to any entry and only the host country provides these each year, but we record this not least because so many hosts have also been involved in other ways
    • Other – we’ve started trying to note creative directors, choreographers, stylists… This is pretty much unlimited and dependent on suitable sources so is never going to be complete. That’s why it’s a generic “Other” category.

    Lots of people fall into three or four of these categories as it’s common for a singer-songwriter to also serve on their country’s jury and sometimes be a spokesperson too, but two people in the Six on Stage database fall into five categories.

    Germany’s Stefan Raab has a long history with the Eurovision Song Contest and that’s reflected in the number of roles he had between 1998 and 2011. He was his country’s named artist in 2000 with Wadde hadde dudde da?, which he also wrote; he wrote and was a backing performer for Max Mutzke‘s 2004 entry; he wrote the legendary Guildo Hat Euch Lieb and turned up to “conduct” the orchestra (who weren’t playing); and finally in 2011 he was one of the Contest’s hosts in Düsseldorf.

    The only person who can match this is Slovenia’s Lea Sirk, and arguably her six roles count more strongly as they don’t include hosting. Her first involvement was actually in 2012 as a jury member before going on to provide backing vocals for Tinkara Kovač in 2014 and ManuElla in 2016. She’s best known for her own entry in 2018, Hvala, ne!, which she also co-wrote, and returned a year later to reveal her country’s jury scores.

    Now if Stefan could come back and sit on Germany’s jury or Lea could host for Slovenia, they could complete the set…

  • Who were the 2023 jurors?

    Much of the discussion following the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 has been focused on the differing choices of the national juries compared with the public vote. But who were this year’s jurors, and which of them had been involved with the Contest before?

    Let’s take a look at the jury members who’ve been involved in the Eurovision Song Contest before, and stick around to the end for some controversial notes…

    Artists

    Sixteen previous Eurovision entrants leant their experience on stage to a dozen national juries this year. They were:

    Backing performers

    Six on Stage particularly celebrates backing performers and at least 11 former Eurovision backing vocalists, musicians and dancers were on their countries’ juries this year. In addition to some of the artists above, they were:

    David Badalyan was also one of the writers of Armenia’s winning Junior Eurovision song Qami Qami in 2021.

    Songwriters

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, a big group of jurors were composers and lyricists, including at least 25 who have written for Eurovision. Some notable members of this group, excluding those already mentioned:

    And also…

    Falling into none of those categories and sitting on Denmark’s jury was Birgitte Næss-Schmidt, who has directed the staging of their entries on eight occasions between 2005 and 2022.

    Norway’s jury included a couple of unsuccessful Melodi Grand Prix finalists, Emmy from 2021 and JONE from 2023, while Sweden’s included Clara Klingenström from Melodifestivalen 2021.

    Returning jurors

    At least 25 former jurors returned for a second (or third!) go at judging Eurovision songs, many of them already featured in the lists above. Those who’ve had the role more than once before include:

    The earliest returning juror was Matjaž Vlašič, who last did the role 14 years ago in 2009.

    So here’s where it gets a little controversial, if only because I don’t have a copy of the current rules for selecting jurors.

    In previous years, there have been a number of rules for the selection of jurors, two of which are:

    • Jurors can’t have sat on a Eurovision jury in the previous two years (which for this year would mean not in 2021 or 2022).
    • Jurors cannot have any direct connection to the songs and/or artists (exactly what this means isn’t set out).

    Last year I highlighted a few 2022 jurors who had been jurors for the previous two contests, and this was also the case for one of the Samminese jurors in 2021. This year there are two jurors who were listed as jurors for their countries in 2021, which as far as we know isn’t allowed: Lise Cabble for Denmark and Sokol Marsi for Albania. Given it’s apparently been broken three years in a row, I’d be interested to know if the rule has changed – after all, a lot did because of Covid.

    On the second rule, a link to your own country’s song or artist may be unavoidable and it’s reasonable to suggest that it isn’t much of an issue given jurors don’t rank their own country. But since the rule doesn’t specify that, it’s worth noting in passing that Gustaph performed as a Eurovision backing vocalist for both Sennek and Hooverphonic, while Aliona Moon was a backing singer for Pasha Parfeni and 2012 and her 2013 song was written by him. Music is a small world and there are probably other examples too. None of that should imply wrongdoing, but if the rule is still in force it would be interesting to know if it only applies to songs jurors can vote for.

  • 10,000 and onwards!

    Six on Stage has reached a big milestone with 10,000 people connected to the Eurovision Song Contest now listed on the site!

    That includes 5,632 people who have performed on the Constest stage at in some capacity as part of a country’s entry, 2,880 songwriters (some of whom performed as well), 833 national spokespeople and 1,765 jurors. There are also 339 conductors – the only number that’s not going to increase any time soon.

    With national final season for 2023 now underway, more people will be added to the site in the coming weeks. The 9,999th person I added was Sidorela Kelmendi, one of the newly-selected family group representing Albania alongside Albina Kelmendi in Liverpool.

    But the 10,000th person was a juror from 1974. Lawyer Basil Herwald was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme by guest editor Björn Ulvaeus. They discussed Basil’s contribution to the 1974 Contest as one of the UK jurors – none of whom gave their one vote to ABBA.

  • Who were the 2022 jurors?

    Last year after the Contest I looked back at the 2021 jurors and – despite six countries’ jury votes being disqualified – this year I’m going to do the same.

    The names of the those jurors, for Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino, were not published on the official list so they are not included in the information below.

    As in 2021, some of the data is a bit messy – Cyprus’s jurors have no surnames provided, helpfully, and historical data is hit and miss – but we’ll do our best with what we have.

    With 34 countries and 5 jurors each, that should leave us with 170 names, but in fact there are 171: one of the French semi-final jurors was replaced for the final (likely they became unavailable and one of the reserves stepped in).

    • Of the 171 jurors, 26 had been jurors before. Rita Guerra was a juror in 1994 (and in between those 1994 and 2022 represented Portugal in 2003).
    • 2 jurors had been on the panel twice before, in 2014 and 2017: Kaspars Ansons of Latvia and Michael Cederberg of Sweden.
    • 7 jurors have written Eurovision songs. Of them, Maian Kärmas wrote a winning song (Estonia’s Everybody from 2001).
    • 3 jurors had previously given their countries’ votes as spokespersons, all of them previous artists: Rasmussen, JOWST and 1993 winner Niamh Kavanagh.
    • 2 jurors were artists who took part in 2021: Montaigne and Tusse.
    • 2 jurors have been involved in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. Swedish juror Josefin Glenmark co-wrote San Marino’s 2015 JESC entry Mirror while Gaia Cauchi won the 2013 JESC for Malta with The Start.
    • 26 jurors have taken part in national finals over the years, 12 of whom did not go on to perform at Eurovision. 6 took part in selection shows for the 2022 Contest: Spain’s Blanca Paloma, North Macedonia’s Yon Idy, Norway’s Mari Bølla, Croatia’s Mia Negovetić, Denmark’s DJ Speakr (from Fuld Effekt), and Czech Republic’s Annabelle.

    While we’re here, let’s remind ourselves of the voting rules, which state that:

    To increase diversity, music industry professionals can only take a seat in a national jury if they have not been in the jury during one of the previous two editions of the contest.

    But according to the published data, Finland’s Amie Borgar and Lithuania’s Darius Uzkuraitis were jurors in 2021, while Belgium’s Alex Germys was listed as a juror in 2019 (there having been no edition in 2020). Hopefully there is a clerical error somewhere…