Liverpool to host Eurovision song contest on behalf of Ukraine

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The Eurovision song contest will be hosted by Liverpool next year after it beat 19 other cites to stage the event on behalf of war-torn Ukraine.

The annual extravaganza will be held in the UK for the first time in 25 years on 13 May as Ukraine is unable to host the event due to the Russian invasion.

Liverpool was one of 20 cities to offer to stage the 67th Eurovision, beating Glasgow in the final two.

The announcement by Graham Norton on the BBC’s One Show on Friday will fire the starting gun on a frenetic six months of preparation to stage one of the most-watched music events in the world.

All eyes will be on Liverpool’s 11,000-capacity M&S Bank Arena for the three live events that culminate in a four-hour grand final in May.

More than 160 million people from around the world tuned in to watch the three events in Turin, Italy, in May.

Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra won the contest with their song Stefania, a folk-rap ensemble they dedicated to all the country’s mothers.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had initially hoped to host next year’s contest in the port city of Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s most devastating bombing, but agreed in July that staging Eurovision would not be possible while fighting continues.

The UK agreed to host next year’s Eurovision on behalf of Ukraine after it finished second with Sam Ryder’s Spaceman, the country’s highest position since 1996.

Nearly 10,000 people are involved in producing the Eurovision song content and they are expected to start converging on Liverpool within weeks. The event will effectively take over the city for almost two months, starting on Easter weekend in April, and draw in thousands of tourists.

Liverpool will run a cultural programme that “represents modern Ukraine – a progressive, creative and ambitious country” and open a Eurovision “village” around the M&S Bank Arena on its historic waterfront.

The core of the city’s programme will be an artist exchange and co-production between Ukrainian and Liverpool-based artists, working closely with its sister city of Odesa in southern Ukraine.

Statues and monuments across Liverpool will be dressed in vinoks, traditional Ukrainian headdresses that have become a symbol of resistance during the fight against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

It will also feature a “takeover” by Ukrainian street artists and host a showcase of pysanka, painted eggs that are a central part of Ukrainian culture around Easter.

For those who enjoy the faintly ridiculous side to Eurovision, there will be a city-wide game of hide-and-seek involving cutouts of Sonia, the Skelmersdale-born singer who came second in Eurovision 1993 with the song Better the Devil You Know.

Claire McColgan, director of Culture Liverpool, said the extravaganza would be a “lifeline” for the city’s hospitality sector, which is still recovering from the pandemic, and that it would “provide hope” for businesses that were “probably going to be on their knees over winter”.