I attended Eurovision 2025 in Basel – here’s what you don’t see on TV

Will she? won’t she? That was the big question on everyone’s lips at this years Eurovision Song Contest.  

The electric intrigue that was pulsing through Basel referred, of course, to Celine Dion and whether or not she would perform. Speculation further fuelled by rumours that a private jet had landed at the nearby airport. 

It wasn’t just my first time in the Swiss city, it was the first time I’ve ever been to watch the competition live.  

For context, I’m Australian so I wasn’t exposed to the wild and wacky music event until 2015 when my home country was invited to participate.  

Over the following decade, my fandom has grown so much that I was on a super fan flight with other die-hard Eurovision fans having a singalong at 35,000 feet.  

Once I was on terra firma, I was impressed how Basel – a city with a population of 173,000 – had pulled out all the stops to almost treble in size welcoming 300,000 visitors. And not just Europeans or Aussies like me – I met people from as far afield as Mexico and Canada.  

It gave me a feeling of international unity that I’d never really understood before. Seeing fans so proudly (and quite literally) wearing their nations was heartening.  

My hotel was in the perfect position for a bit of star gazing – right across the road from the Eurovision Village at the MesseQuartier exhibition centre.  

I can’t tell you how many performances I listened in on, or the number Eurovision icons I met – think last year’s winner, Nemo, Switzerland’s Zoë Më, and of course, Australia’s Milkshake Man Go-Jo.  

But my highlight was meeting Portugal’s NAPA who, the night before shocked the world – and themselves – by securing a spot in the final.  

And yet here they were, on the brink of performing to 160 million people, just casually meeting fans, posing for selfies in a city park.  

The bits you don’t see 

Performances that move you to tears (Italian act Lucio Corsi’s Volevo Essere Un Duro about the struggles to fit in and be a ‘tough guy’ caught me off guard), crowds filling in the blanks for Malta (their track, Serving, was censored from Serving Kant), and massive speakers, you’d think Eurovision is a constant wall of sound.  

But then there are moments of deafening silence.  

After all the camp glory of the songs, the dancing, the costumes, the staging, it is remarkable that so many people – 6,500 in the stadium and 36,000 watching over the road at St Jakob Park – stopped everything to listen to the results.  

And then just as dramatically, all hell breaks loose again with heartbreak for Spain when Melody was given just 10 points; gasps as the UK and Switzerland hear the dreaded ‘nul point’; and rampant joy when Austria’s JJ was crowned winner.  

He’d been favourite to win in the months leading to the competition. Even still, he told me he’d broken down in tears and described the result as ‘surreal’. 

On the night, the St Jakobshalle stadium – not as big as I thought, but they pack a punch with their pyrotechnics and wind machines – all the mishaps from rehearsals were forgotten.  

Finlands’ Erika Vikman’s massive golden microphone lifted her across the stage (in practice it stayed stubbornly on the ground) and Denmark’s Sissal was able to rest enough to get her voice back.  

And between each performance, while viewers around the world watch the commentary, in rolls the prop team with just 30 seconds to disassemble and rebuild the stage.  

How fast could you swap out a five-metre chandelier staircase and a pair of massive red sparkly lips holding a disco ball? 

On the night of the final, rumours about Celine potentially performing continued to spread. At one point a photo started circulating between journalists showing a dressing room backstage with the sign ‘Top Secret’ plastered above it. That was the confirmation we’d been waiting for! Until when speaking to a Swiss journalist he quickly realised one of the acts in the night’s line-up were the Basel based Top Secret Drum Corps…

Celine, who won in 1988, didn’t end up performing, and I’d love to know her thoughts on it all.  

But that hasn’t stopped me from converting from a casual sceptic to a die-hard fan, filled with the absurd, camp and glorious joy of Eurovision.   

The Eurovision Song Contest 2025 is streaming on BBC iPlayer.

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