logo
Meet the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 grand final presenters

Meet the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 grand final presenters

The Eurovision Song Contest 2025 grand final is tonight and fans are eager to find out who will be hosting the world's biggest music event.
Throughout this week, excitement has been building with BBC airing the two semi-finals on Tuesday, May 13, and Thursday, May 15, narrowing down the competition.
A whopping 37 countries are going to be taking to the stage at St Jakobshalle, Basel, in Switzerland, this evening, Saturday, May 17.
As always, talk show host Graham Norton is going to be behind the cameras as the UK's Eurovision voiceover with BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds' coverage presented by Scott Mills and Rylan Clark.
So who will be the presenters taking to the main stage to host the grand final of Eurovision 2025?
During the semi-finals, it was comedian and presenter Hazel Brugger and former Eurovision performer Sandra Studer who led proceedings.
But for the grand final, the pair are going to be joined by Michelle Hunziker who Eurovision has described as 'one of Europe's most beloved entertainers'.
Hazel Brugger is an award-winning comedian with a number of accolades under her belt including a German Comedy Award and a Salzburg Bull award.
She will once again be sharing the stage for the third time this week with presenter and singer Sandra Studer.
Sandra took part in the Eurovision Song Contest herself in 1991 when she represented Sweden and came in fifth place with the song Canzone Per Te.
She continues to work closely with Eurovision since her stint on stage, acting as a pre-selection host, spokesperson and commentator.
For the big night, Brugger and Studer are going to be accompanied on the main stage by Michelle Hunziker.
She is a seasons presenter for various German and Italian shows including Striscia la Notizia, Festival di Sanremo and Wetten, dass…?.
Co-executive producers of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 Moritz Stadler and Reto Peritz shared that they chose these three women as the night's presenters as they wanted them to bring 'unique versatility' to the stage, including 'comedy, dance and singing'.
The 37 countries taking part this year are almost exactly the same as last year's line-up in Malmo, Sweden, apart from Montenegro which is returning for the first time since 2022.
Montenegro is replacing Moldova which withdrew from Eurovision 2025 due to 'financial and logistical challenges', according to BBC.
The Eurovision Song Contest grand final airs from 8pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

‘If people can give their opinion on TV, surely I can give my opinion on Instagram' – Samantha Mumba stands by Eurosong comments
‘If people can give their opinion on TV, surely I can give my opinion on Instagram' – Samantha Mumba stands by Eurosong comments

Irish Independent

time37 minutes ago

  • Irish Independent

‘If people can give their opinion on TV, surely I can give my opinion on Instagram' – Samantha Mumba stands by Eurosong comments

She admitted she was a 'bit surprised' that her Instagram post had generated the reaction it did when she hit out at the panel of commentators after the show. Her song My Way was not selected to represent Ireland at the Eurovision in Basel last month. The competition was won by Norwegian singer Emmy (24) and her song Laika Party, which ultimately failed to qualify for the Eurovision grand final last month. The Irish entry ranked in the bottom four contestants in the the semi-final, receiving just 28 points. Mumba generated a social media storm when she criticised the panel – with the exception of previous Eurovision entry Bambie Thug – for not having the 'credentials, experience or professionalism required' to take on the role. She also made some other remarks, including her 'parting gift' to the panel, which was 'a bag of [emoji] to slowly choke on'. The emoji Mumba used was the aubergine icon. Donal Skehan, who was on the panel alongside radio presenter Laura Fox and dancer Arthur Gourounlian, called the comments 'completely unprofessional'. Mumba said in a follow-up post that her comments were 'never about me not winning' and that she felt strongly that the panel were 'dismissive of all the contestants, which was disappointing given the amount of work and passion we all put into our performances'. Speaking to RTÉ Radio One's Brendan O'Connor Show this morning, the singer said it was 'a very, very personal thing' for her to enter the competition and she wanted to step out of her comfort zone. 'So even doing that, and doing a song competition, isn't something that I had on my bingo list at 42 at all." She said it would have been 'ego' to believe she should not have been competing in a contest, adding: 'And it's a song competition, and I wouldn't want to represent Ireland with a song that Ireland didn't want either or do something.' ADVERTISEMENT She said: 'I think fair is fair, and I think if that's the process, then that's what it was. "And honestly, I was just proud of myself for doing it because it definitely wouldn't have been something that I would've been necessarily even thinking I would have the balls to do it, if I'm being totally honest, like, a few years ago. No, I loved the process of all of it." On whether she was surprised about the reaction her post on the process received, she said that 'everybody's entitled to an opinion'. "And I was a bit surprised - that wasn't even the focus. Like, I think I just... What I wrote was just at the end of the post. The focus of the post was actually just thanking everybody on the team who'd worked so hard on it. "I didn't see what the big deal was." She added that she is not on social media very often so was not aware that the post would generate the reaction it did. "But I mean, I certainly stand by what I said. I don't take it back. "I think, you know, fair is fair, if people can give their opinion on national television, surely I'm allowed to give my opinion on my own Instagram page. I think that's fair." The singer also said she believes the Eurosong should be separated from the Late Late Show into a separate programme. "I love the variety of it. I love kind of the process that it's open to everybody," she said. "I think if I had one immediate one, I would think that it should be its own show, and it definitely should be televised in a music venue that is set up for singers."

30 years since Riverdance blew our minds and our 'holy f**ks' still echo'
30 years since Riverdance blew our minds and our 'holy f**ks' still echo'

Irish Daily Mirror

time2 hours ago

  • Irish Daily Mirror

30 years since Riverdance blew our minds and our 'holy f**ks' still echo'

IT remains a flame that will never burn low for anybody gifted a ringside seat for its mighty, ecstatic, hot-blooded, jaw-dropping, spine-tingling, seven-minutes-of-wonderment unveiling. In truth, we were more than a little tipsy that night, yet even through that long-ago fug of alcohol, the wave of rapture that invaded the packed bar where we witnessed - stupefied, teary, a chorus of astonished "holy f***s" the only words we could summon - Riverdance being midwifed into the world remains as vivid three decades on as Michael Flatley's immaculately waxed chest. It felt like a detonation of some new Irishness, a marriage of ancient dance and modern expression, something liberating and fresh invading both the evening and the heart with its riveting beauty, mesmerising a global audience of some 300 million. Before writing this piece, to reassure myself my memory wasn't playing tricks, I re-watched Flatley and, first, Jean Butler thundering onto the stage at The Point Theatre on April 30th 1994, the interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest. It is gobsmacking, electrifying, primal, emotional, an authentic "wow" moment that retains all its capacity to fire a lovely cascade of shivers down the spinal chord. A cocktail of fiddles and bodhráns, the lead dancers owning the coliseum, alone under the klieg lights, a triumph of athletic movement, rhythmic tempo, exquisite balance and beguiling cadence. Master and Mistress of the universe. The urge then was to lock away the memory, retain it for the rest of time, the same compulsion that might overwhelm an art lover on encountering a renaissance master's brushstrokes hanging on the gallery walls of the Louvre. At that moment it felt unsurpassable. Perfect. Before it became a commercial behemoth - one watched live by more than 30 million people (five times the population of Ireland) at some 15,000 performances in 49 countries, selling over 10 million DVDs worldwide) - there was this. Just this. A seven minute slot. A transfixed house erupting in spontaneous, orgasmic acclaim. An 'is this really happening?' sense of disbelief and awe. And, as the camera pans to a breathless Flatley, giggling as he accepts the rapture of the audience, the vertigo of new possibilities opening dizzyingly before him, an impossibly youthful Gerry Ryan asking his audience a rhetorical question. "What about that, stunning music, amazing dancing, was that or was it not the most spectacular performance you have ever seen?" Few who had watched Flatley's feet move as if fired from the mouth of a howitzer were inclined to raise a dissenting voice. Looking at it now through the telescope of all those years, Ryan's words don't feel remotely contrived or rehearsed, but, rather an instinctive and visceral response to something irresistible. I was 25 years of age and Irish dancing was so far distant on the polar opposite side of the bandwidth to my interests that it might have existed on the dark side of the moon. And yet, like half the nation, I was entranced by the orchestra of sounds and the sway of elegant, angelic movement. Flatley and Butler had carried the night into another dimension. Our football team was in the long since vanished O'Dwyer's Bar on Dublin's Mount Street, celebrating a league title we had claimed that afternoon courtesy of our own exhibition of superior, Flatley-esque footwork (for some reason I still haven't figured we never toured the world, never had to fight off groupies, never made tens of millions, but, hey, them's the breaks). The Eurovision was on in the background. Nobody was too bothered. Then Bill Whelan's score exploded into life and it was like every living creature in that bustling tavern had been hypnotised. There was never a moment over the next 500 or so seconds when our attention was allowed veer from the TV screen. It was that good, that instantly stimulating, dance as mainlined narcotic, a mood-altering Celtic opiate. Sense of place played a significant role in the elemental ache of joy. It was one of the few times since Italia 90 four years earlier that I had felt that sudden surge - call it patriotism, call it a sense of belonging, call it pride in our heritage - that fills a room to the brim with something I can only describe as heartsoar. We embraced and emoted as we had at the end of the game a few hours earlier. I think there might even have been an eruption of the dreaded Oles. It was a slightly self-conscious way of trying to mask the fact that we were all on the verge of sobbing. It really was that powerful. There we were, a group whose preferred music ranged from The Jam to Bowie to Ska to The Stones, incontinent with emotion because of something we might have scoffed at ten minutes earlier. We were in our native city, yet for some reason the lyric that best describes how I felt in that moment comes from U2's A Sort of Homecoming. "For tonight, at last/I am coming home/I am coming home." So many of those Eurovision interval slots tend to be twee and insecure, but here was an exhibition of rip-roaring Irish self-confidence. A visual, aural, comfortable-in-its-skin feast of excellence. A year later, Riverdance went on the road, and it is that 30th anniversary landmark that was celebrated this week at The Gaiety and at various afterparties that ran long into the night. A confession: I have never been to the full show and never felt an urgent need. In some perverse way, I find the vast global ATM - churning out dollars and yen and all the currencies of the world - into which it has transformed, slightly off-putting. But, we'll always have O'Dwyer's. The emotions awakened by that seismic seven minute rumble in 1994 were sufficiently pure to last a hundred lifetimes. Its innocence; the bone-shaking delight of Flatley hot-footing across the floor with manic, charismatic glee; Butler's effortless elegance and natural-born class; the blur of feet; the way the music hit you beneath the rib cage; the astonishment as we observed the birth of something magical and, the way it made us all all remains gloriously evocative. Ireland would win the Eurovision that night - back then, as invincible as a team co-managed by Jim Gavin and John Kiely, we almost always won - courtesy of Charlie McGettigan and Paul Harrington performing Rock 'n' Roll Kids. Harrington watched the interval act from backstage and still recalls how the arena convulsed. "That night," he says, "felt like the beginning of the roar of the Celtic Tiger and I was right at the epicentre." Riverdance became a synonym for excellence, for a slightly mythical Irish form of self-expression, a way of articulating a cultural moment that triggered a wash of reverence. Liam Griffin, the messianic and erudite Wexford manager who led the county to a first All-Ireland title for 28 years in 1996, lovingly depicted hurling as the "Riverdance of sport." His poetic description was both arresting and apt. Here were two uniquely Irish forms of cultural expression, both dances, one using feet, the other a sliotar and a wand of ash, each seeming to eloquently express a powerful sense of Irishness. In their liquid movement, their natural flow, Cian Lynch or Patrick Horgan or TJ Reid might well be riverdancing. A great hurling match is both a spectacle and a feeling. It finds your gut. It lifts you to a place of brighter light, this tumultuous choir of stick and ball and galloping athletes. At its best, it dresses itself in a cloak of myth. As Flatley and Butler did all those years ago. On Anna Livia's banks, they danced their dance and the ancient river was not alone in nodding its damp, splashing head in approval, in understanding it had witnessed the shifting of Irish art to the highest ground.

Stacey Dooley slammed by ‘disappointed' fans after announcing ‘grim deviant' Lily Phillips as star of new TV series
Stacey Dooley slammed by ‘disappointed' fans after announcing ‘grim deviant' Lily Phillips as star of new TV series

The Irish Sun

time3 hours ago

  • The Irish Sun

Stacey Dooley slammed by ‘disappointed' fans after announcing ‘grim deviant' Lily Phillips as star of new TV series

STACEY Dooley has been slammed by fans after announcing Lily Phillips as one of the stars of her new TV series. The presenter's iconic show, 4 Stacey Dooley has left fans totally divided after announcing Lily Phillips as the star of her new TV series Credit: U&Original 4 The first episode of the sixth series of Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over will follow the controversial OnlyFans creator Credit: Olivia West 4 Many were horrified by the news and expressed their "disappointment" Credit: BBC There will be three brand new episodes, whereby Posting on social media, Alongside a snap of the '3 families, 3 fascinating episodes, you're gonna love it.' Read more on Lily Phillips While some were 'interested' by the idea of seeing The post has clearly left many open-mouthed, as it has quickly racked up 3,646 likes and 67 comments. One person gasped: 'Pretty grim giving that deviant airtime, not a single positive thing can come from the trainwreck of her life, screams if the worst click bait, expected better tbh.' Whilst another sighed: 'Really disappointing, just don't think Most read in Celebrity 'Lowest derivative entertainment, a real regression in content from you Stacey.' Meanwhile, a third joked: 'If she is sleeping over at Woman claims her dad was in 'homewrecker' Lily Phillips' sex challenge But at the same time, one TV fan wrote: 'Omg wow this will be so interesting!!!!' And another chimed in: 'Can't wait to watch it!' Viewers will see the Brit sex worker, who was recently slammed as 'fake' after Pretty grim giving that deviant airtime, not a single positive thing can come from the trainwreck of her life Instagram user Overjoyed at the news of the news episodes, Stacey Dooley beamed: 'I'm thrilled to be back for another series of 'Truly, it's such a loved format and people always remind me of their fave moments when I'm out and about. Former porn star shares advice for Lily Phillips LILY Phillips is a name many of us now know, thanks to her controversial plan to bed 1,000 men in 24 hours. The OnlyFans star is hoping to break the world record with the endeavour - a record currently held by adult film star Lisa Sparks, with 919 men. But adult film star Jasmin St. Claire - who's most famous for having sex with 300 men in 24 hours for X-rated 1996 film The World's Biggest G**g Bang II - has issued a word of warning to the 23-year-old to ensure she's regularly tested for sexually transmitted diseases. "I get a lot of OnlyFans girls on my podcast ... and the one common story is all of the different STD outbreaks in the business," Jasmin "Like, I've never heard of half this stuff in my life. I'm like, holy s**t. Can a doctor from India cure that? "Like, seriously, because these are some weird things." 'We've got another three episodes that you're gonna love! The themes we touch on feel incredibly timely. 'As always, a sincere thank you to those families who agree to open their doors. Strap in!' Meanwhile, Emile Nawagamuwa, one of the show's commissioners, explained: 'The sixth series of Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over demonstrates the remarkable strength of Stacey's appeal as a documentarian and this simple, compelling concept. 'It has been three years since Stacey last slept over in the homes of UK families, and more people than ever have proudly chosen to break the rules and live life according to their own unique values. This series is going to be a cracker Jes Wilkins, Firecracker Films 'This series promises to be more eye-opening and enlightening than ever.' At the same time, Jes Wilkins from Firecracker Films added: 'To be making a sixth series of Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over in the current commissioning climate is one of the proudest achievements of my career and it's a testament to a wonderful creative and commercial partnership with Stacey and everyone at UKTV. 'This series is going to be a cracker.' The sixth series of Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over will air on U and U&W later this year. All episodes of previous series are available to stream for free on U. Unlock even more award-winning articles as The Sun launches brand new membership programme - Sun Club 4 The first episode of the show, which is produced by Firecracker Films, will feature Lily Credit: UKTV

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store