The decision has been made ESC 2025 will take place in Basel - President of the Government dances with joy
After a long bidding process, two Swiss cities were still battling it out to host the ESC. Now it is clear: Basel will host the event in 2025.
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- The largest Swiss cities have applied to host the ESC 2025, with Geneva and Basel making it onto the shortlist.
- After a long application process, SRG has now decided on a venue.
- The ESC 2025 will take place in Basel.
"The tangible motivation is one of the deciding factors," said an SRG media spokesperson after the first round of applications. This was probably not enough for the city of Zurich, which is why this option was also immediately eliminated.
Nemo's home town of Biel also had to bury its hopes, with only Geneva and Basel still in the running. Now the decision has been made.
The ESC 2025 will take place in Basel. This was announced by SRG on Friday morning. Basel will therefore host the world's largest music event as the so-called "host city" and has beaten Geneva in the final sprint. According to SRG, the two cities had been in a neck-and-neck race.
President of the Basel government dances with joy
The main venue will therefore be Basel's St. Jakobshalle. The costs for the ESC are estimated by the Basel government at 30 to 35 million francs. The city will thus be in the spotlight of millions of people: During the three live TV shows from Malmö, Sweden, in 2024, 163 million people watched the music performances, including almost 800,000 from Switzerland alone.
Conradin Cramer (FDP), President of the Government of Basel, welcomes the SRG's decision. In a video posted on social media, he even gets carried away and dances for joy.
The ESC is returning to Switzerland for the first time in 36 years after Nemo's surprising victory last spring. In 1988, Céline Dion won the contest for Switzerland with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi" in the Irish capital Dublin, after which the event was held at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne the following year.
On May 24, 1956, the first "Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson" - as the contest was still called at the time - took place in the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano.
The first official media conference of the winning city will take place at 1 p.m. and will address the plans for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025.
