13-05-2025
Eurovision 2025: Australia has been in the song contest for 10 years. What now?
It's been 10 years since Australia rocked up at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest with Guy Sebastian singing the achingly safe and respectable 'Tonight Again' as a wildcard entry.
And despite yearly questions of "why is Australia in Eurovision?", we're still going.
Sure, we've failed to qualify for the grand final twice: the first time in 2021 with Montaigne's layered, if convoluted pop track, 'Technicolour', and last year, with ethereal electro-pop duo Electric Fields' dance anthem, 'One Milkali (One Blood)', sung partly in Language.
But non-qualifying is a normal part of the Eurovision journey for every competing country — unless you're Ukraine, and have a perfect qualification record.
And Australia has also experienced some real Eurovision highs.
The highest was undoubtedly coming second in 2016 with Dami Im's powerful, timeless ballad 'Sound of Silence' — our best result in the competition so far.
Not only have we cracked the top 10 four more times, we've also brought impressive levels of diversity.
Our representing artists have hailed from the likes of Australian Idol, the Queensland Conservatorium of Music and TikTok, and have been overwhelmingly culturally and ethnically diverse; it wasn't until Kate Miller-Heidke — who came ninth with 'Zero Gravity' in 2019 — that we had a white Australian Eurovision representative.
There will always be Eurovision purists who argue non-European countries shouldn't be in the contest — Israel and Azerbaijan face complaints, too.
But a decade in, it's starting to feel like we belong.
"I don't think there were any other performances in my life, before or since, that have been that intense … I felt it the whole time," says Dami Im of her time on Eurovision in 2016.
"But when I look back, I feel like it was very special that I got to be a part of something so big.
"It impacted me on a huge level, like so dramatically. I would say there was me before Eurovision and me after Eurovision. The two Damis are very different to me."
Not only was competing in Eurovision "powerful" in connecting the Meanjin/Brisbane-based singer-songwriter with a global fan base — it also helped her see something in herself.
Nine years on, she says she's still benefiting from the "confidence" boost Eurovision gave her; just last year, Dami took part in Eurovision on Tour, with a string of concerts across the globe. And she's currently recording her seventh studio album.
Jess Carniel has spent the past decade researching the song contest and our place in it. She agrees Eurovision is a great way to showcase Australian talent to a global audience of 163 million people.
"Now, we've got fans of Australian artists living in Portugal and Brazil and Sweden and China, and they've got access to these artists watching Eurovision," the associate professor in humanities at the University of South Queensland explains.
And beyond the kitsch, the drinking games and the joy that is Europop, she says there are many more cultural and political reasons why direct involvement in Eurovision is important for Australia.
"Once we started participating in Eurovision, it became this really interesting way of feeling connected to the rest of the world. That's a recurring theme in my research."
Carniel says that connection isn't about our "European roots" ("Australians from a diverse range of backgrounds love Eurovision"), but forging new cultural and political ties.
"Especially in this political climate, where our major military partner [the United States] is going off the rails, we need to make sure we're situated in the world in a different way," she explains.
Guy and Dami, as well as their successors, Isaiah and Jessica Mauboy, were all chosen internally by SBS.
The broadcaster changed things up in 2019, opening the selection process to the Australian public with a national competition.
Set on the Gold Coast, Eurovision — Australia Decides was a game-changer for fans who struggle to make it to Europe for the main event, the local economy and up-and-coming artists.
But SBS canned the national contest — which crowned Kate Miller-Heidke, Montaigne and Sheldon Riley — after just three editions.
The organisation told TV Tonight in 2022: "A variety of factors contributed to us coming to this decision."
"My understanding is it came down to [the fact] their licensing deal to use the word 'Eurovision' had expired, and apparently running the event was very expensive," Carniel says.
She thinks it's "really, really sad" the national competition was scrapped, because it was worthwhile for domestic audiences and brought "quite a bit to the Gold Coast economy".
"And it wasn't just Australians watching it. Someone like Jaguar Jonze has fans around the world, not because she represented us in Eurovision, but because she was part of the national selection," Carniel says.
Even the internally selected Dami wants to see Eurovision — Australia Decides return.
"In Australia, we don't get a lot of opportunities to showcase our music [and] being in the music industry is really, really difficult," she says.
But Emily Griggs, head of the Australian delegation and SBS Entertainment, says SBS has no plans to resume the national competition "any time soon".
Since returning to an internal selection process in 2023, SBS has sent two Eurovision — Australia Decides runners-up to represent Australia: Voyager, followed by Electric Fields.
For 2025, the broadcaster selected Go-Jo — a relatively unknown artist who built a following on TikTok and who will represent Australia with 'Milkshake Man'.
Carniel may have dedicated the past decade of her life to researching Australia's involvement in Eurovision, but she's actually "really, really surprised" we're competing this year.
"I felt that last year, the late announcement of Electric Fields, and the fact [SBS] had selected Electric Fields at all, was a swan song," she says.
Then came the announcement longtime Australian hosts Myf Warhurst and Joel Creasey would not return, adding to the sense "we were just in this weird limbo land".
Their replacements, Courtney Act and Tony Armstrong, were announced just over a month before the 2025 contest.
"It feels like there isn't the same kind of investment and level of energy there was when we first started, from SBS's side," Carniel says.
"I think SBS needs to demonstrate their commitment a little bit more than they have in the past few years, by keeping us in the loop a little bit more around their plans and decision-making processes.
There's no confirmation yet of our continued participation beyond this year; Australia currently relies on an annual invitation to compete in the contest.
While she won't reveal specific figures ("Eurovision is about much more than dollars and cents"), Griggs says SBS's "investment in Eurovision has naturally evolved over the years … as with any major production", and that the broadcaster's commitment to the contest "remains unwavering".
Far from the end some local fans and experts like Carniel fear, she sees 2025 as the beginning of a "new chapter" for Australia in Eurovision.
The Eurovision Song Contest airs live and in prime time from May 14-18 exclusively on SBS and SBS On Demand.
