Welcome back Luxembourg!

On the 12th this month, it was announced by the EBU, almost out of the blue, that Luxembourg would be returning to the Eurovision Song Contest, after 30* years of absence. This came as a surprise to many people, with a lot of people thinking that perhaps after 30 years, Luxembourg may as well just never come back. The Luxembourgish broadcaster RTL (and for those wondering, it's "Luxembourgish", not "Luxembourgian", despite the calls for help from the spellcheck) has always said in the past few years that it was difficult for small countries to win Eurovision.

*: yes, pedants, it's 30 years but only 29 contests. Do you like how 29 sounds? Because I don't.

If we look at the past few winners, that's not exactly changed. Netherlands, Italy, Ukraine, Sweden - not exactly microstates, as it were. So if the small-country-winning situation hasn't changed, what's changed at RTL headquarters? I'll tell you what's changed - a specialized working group in the government *dedicated* to bringing Luxembourg back to Eurovision 2024. Not just some Eurovision in the undetermined "near future", but *2024*. And who else to lead this working group than the prime minister himself, Xavier Bettel, who also happens to be the Minister for Communications and Media.

In fact, this had been in the works for at least five months according to official reports, when RTL themselves were writing about a potential ESC2024 return back in December. But according to Sietse Bakker, executive producer of ESC2021 and current member of the Reference Group, formal talks had already began as early as last summer. So this has been a project quite a while in the making. It didn't come out of nowhere.

And we can see that contrary to what some people may claim, this isn't the EBU "begging" old countries to come back because some other countries withdrew - this was entirely of Luxembourg's own accord, or maybe the decision of the prime minister and his associates. Nonetheless, some speculate that this could inspire other smaller countries to return to Eurovision, such as Andorra. (We'll talk about Monaco later.)

Some people also joked that considering that Xavier Bettel is gay (as in, he is literally married to another man), they were surprised Luxembourg didn't return to the contest earlier, given the associations of the LGBTQ+ with Eurovision. (Bonus fact: the first-ever Luxembourgish winning song, "Nous Les Amoureux" by Jean-Claude Pascal in 1961, was in fact about a hidden homosexual relationship. Pascal was himself gay, and the lyrics of the song were deliberately gender-ambiguous, as there likely would've been great public controversy. So Luxembourg is hardly unfamiliar with LGBTQ+ themes at Eurovision.) Some also reported seeing Bettel attend Eurovision 2018 in Lisbon. Why specifically 2018 and not any other edition? We'll come back to that. Regardless, there had been actual promising signs of a potential Luxembourgish return even last year, and clearly it's now been realized.

So, for those of us who weren't born before 1993, what was Luxembourg at Eurovision like? Let's take a look.

Luxembourg, a Eurovision powerhouse

Luxembourg was one of the first-ever countries to take part in Eurovision. After all, they are a stone's throw from Switzerland, the first-ever winner of Eurovision and of course where we now know to be the headquarters of the EBU. Luxembourg's also a French-speaking country and French was all the rage in 20th century Europe. Luxembourg was also a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, which would later become the European Union. So it came as (perhaps retrospectively) little surprise that Luxembourg would also be one of the founding members of the Concours Eurovision De La Chanson, or Eurovision in short. Alongside six other countries, all of which were in Western Europe, and two of which were in fact the other members of the Benelux, Luxembourg made their debut at the Eurovision Song Contest in the very first edition of the contest, in 1956. It perhaps seems fitting then, that during the last contest in which Luxembourg participated, all six founding countries were present.

One thing that characterized Luxembourg's (and incidentally Monaco's) participation in the 20th century was that they almost exclusively sent songs in French sung by foreign singers, usually from France. Luxembourg famously has had 8 whole acts of theirs (out of 37) actually come from Luxembourg, while Monaco has had none barring Minouche Barelli (1967) who, despite being French-born, spent much time in the principality and in fact died there. There was even one Luxembourgish winner from Greece, that is Vicky Leandros singing "Après Toi" in 1972. Of the 8 Luxembourgish acts to come from Luxembourg, three of them sung in the Luxembourgish language: 1960, 1992, and 1993. The rest, and indeed the rest of all participations, sung in French and only French, barring minor phrases in English or German.

Of course we have to remember that the language rule was in place from 1966 to 1972, then from 1977 to 1998. We know as well that some iconic winners have come out of the brief windows during which the language rule was not in place - think "Waterloo" - but Luxembourg at the time treated the contest as if the language rule had always been in place. Their closest thing to an English song was 1974 (indeed when the language rule was not enforced), when Ireen Sheer sang "Bye Bye I Love You", which repeats this English phrase a few times in the song despite the rest of the lyrics still in French.

During this time, Luxembourg had been pretty successful at the contest. As you'll have heard from Graham Norton by now, Luxembourg's won five times - all of which incidentally were accomplished in the first 30 years of the contest - and so prior to the 2023 contest were joint third in number of wins, tied with the UK, France and Netherlands. (And now they're joint second because we no longer have any country with 6 wins.) But as we now know, after taking part in Kvalifikacija Za Millstreet and placing 20th out of 25 entries in the final contest, Luxembourg walked away and never returned...until now.

What's happening now?

As mentioned earlier, on the 12th, just the day before the 2023 Grand Final, the EBU made the announcement. I suspect they may have wanted to keep the secret a bit longer, but the BBC thought that it would be a good idea for Graham Norton to "announce" the news and for Hannah Waddingham to act surprised on live television despite having already heard the news during dress rehearsals.

The broadcaster responsible for participation is still RTL Luxembourg, which was the same broadcaster doing Eurovision for Luxembourg in the 20th century. The CEO of RTL Luxembourg said this: "We are delighted that Luxembourg is returning to the Eurovision Song Contest – and even more excited that RTL Luxembourg will take on the exhilarating task of selecting the 2024 delegation. As a media company that is dedicated to the people of Luxembourg, we are looking forward to broadcasting the star-studded live shows. Viewers will be able to experience the Eurovision Song Contest in its full glory." One thing I find intriguing is that whether RTL are doing Eurovision or not, they always stress that they're doing this for the people of Luxembourg. And given that there's clear interest in the contest among the people of Luxembourg as I'll mention again later, I suppose RTL's decided that returning to Eurovision would be fulfilling the wishes of Luxembourgers. Or that's what we can tell ourselves when clearly it was Xavier Bettel and co who strongarmed RTL into shutting up about the small countries narrative.

The eurovision.tv article about the return also mentioned that there will be full local commentary and broadcasts of all three live shows, and that further information on the selection procedure and application process will be provided in July. So join me, as we bookmark the entire month of July in our calendars. I'll be honest, the first time around I didn't read anything about "application process", and I honestly suspect it was added in later while no one was watching. So if you've watched my video on Luxembourg, just pretend I didn't say the part about RTL going to ask songwriters themselves, since clearly they'd like singers and/or songwriters to voluntarily sign up.

And on the topic of their Eurovision entry, let's take a look at what a country that hasn't done Eurovision for three decades has to take into consideration, given the far-reaching changes which the contest has seen through in the 21st century.

30 years out: a debut more than a return

Other than Luxembourg, there is only one other country which has participated in Eurovision, but NOT in the 21st century, that of course is Morocco. (Incidentally, Finland has the honour of being the only country to ever place below Morocco in Eurovision.) Morocco's probably not coming back - the one time they participated to begin with was because Israel had to withdraw, and so they were fine to take part. Certainly now they could do it, given they still are an EBU member and even signed a peace treaty with Israel sometime ago, and Israel genuinely looks to be at risk of being kicked out of the EBU, but I reckon they have more pressing matters to worry about than a silly little song contest which doesn't have much viewership in the country.

But back to Luxembourg, and speaking of viewership, it was revealed after the contest had ended that one of the non-participating countries who voted the most (via ROTW) was, you guessed it, Luxembourg. In fact, if we count their (rather dismissive) paragraph as a ranking, then in terms of places in Europe, Luxembourg was the second-most proactive voting region, just after Kosovo and ahead of Hungary and Slovakia. Many people also noted that OGAE Luxembourg had a surprisingly large voter count: 65 people took part in the 2023 OGAE vote, as opposed to 34 from Serbia, 23 from Lithuania, 21 from Croatia, 20 from Estonia, 17 from Slovenia, 15 from Romania, 14 from Azerbaijan, 13 from Latvia, and 10 from Albania. (FYI: Czechia had 50, and Hungary 42.) Of course the number of OGAE voters isn't necessarily proportional to Eurovision interest - Estonia, Lithuania and Slovenia for example go big on ESC - but the fact that Luxembourg had more OGAE voters than many of these participating countries goes to show that interest in Eurovision is very much well and alive in the Grand Duchy.

So what exactly do we have to consider with a country that doesn't know a Eurovision without the orchestra? Let's take a look:

1) Artist & song selection

As mentioned earlier, RTL are posting more details about the selection and application process in July. But this doesn't really tell us whether Luxembourg are opting to have a national final or an internal selection. We know of course that VRT rebooted Eurosong this year and got a good result with it. But RTBF and AVROTROS (Netherlands) are both more inclined towards internal selections - the former usually just going for The Voice Belgique contestants while the latter has its own application process. Sound familiar?

It should also be noted that compared to Iceland, Luxembourg doesn't actually have a whole lot of singers per capita. There's a reason they borrowed so many foreign singers in the 20th century. Nonetheless, there are now quite a few domestic artists in the Grand Duchy, and one wonders whether RTL are planning something like a localized Una Voce Per San Marino where people from France and the Benelux can apply, or whether they try to nurture the Luxembourgish music scene as much as possible.

2) Languages

As I also mentioned earlier, Luxembourg in Eurovision had an obsession with French, to the point where they stuck with it even when the language rule wasn't in place. But what are they up to now? Songs like Tattoo have been charting very high in Luxembourg, so clearly English songs have appeal there. And if we look at Belgium, they haven't sent a song in French since *2005*. And the last two times they did send songs in English, in 2000 they came last, and in 2005 they came 22nd out of 25 in the semi-final (singular). Conversely, they've gotten six top 12 results since 2010 with songs in English.

Some people had suggested that part of what made Luxembourg and Monaco want to return is that 2 of the top 3 in 2021 were French-language songs. Certainly that could be true for Monaco, but I'm not so sure of that with Luxembourg.

I can absolutely see Luxembourg send English-language songs, especially since after three decades the management at RTL has definitely changed; and the demographics of Luxembourg being so foreign these days means that RTL kind of has to cater for non-French speakers. Hell, if we're really going wild then Luxembourg could even send songs in Portuguese. I'm not just throwing a random language out there - I specify Portuguese for a reason that you'll find out very shortly.

3) Genres, "brand"

As we know, some countries have their own brand at Eurovision - something that we Eurofans and sometimes even casual viewers expect of those countries. Georgia does whatever the hell Georgia wants to do, Latvia tends to send more indie-type stuff, Armenia's focusing on young artists, Finland's been tending towards the rocky side lately, and Sweden of course is the master of extremely polished pop. And of course the Netherlands is into somber ballads, while Belgium prefers dark pop and sometimes even a bit of R&B lately. What kind of brand will Luxembourg take? Are they even going to have a brand, or literally just send whatever they want? Or is it like Switzerland where they make the best out of the limited entries they receive? It's all up in the air.

4) Televote

Immediately after the announcement of Luxembourg's return, several people pointed out that of all countries, Portugal gets a new voting ally. Why Portugal? Well, as it turns out, a not-insignificant proportion of the Luxembourgish population are Portuguese citizens. In my video, I said that it was 18%, or almost 1/5 of the whole population. Well, that data was dated to 2017. As of writing this, in late May, the 2023 census is out, and the proportion of Portuguese are down to just 14.5%. Wonder why these Portuguese left Luxembourg and/or what kinds of non-Portuguese moved to Luxembourg en masse enough to displace 4% of Portuguese Luxembourgers.

Regardless, that's still more than a seventh of the Luxembourgish population being from Portugal. This came about due to economic downturn in mid-20th century Portugal, while at the same time Luxembourg was booming and had signed in family reunification policies for Portuguese expatriate workers in Luxembourg. Portuguese are now everywhere in Luxembourg - some of them becoming footballers, while others go into politics, with even the former Deputy Prime Minister having been of Portuguese descent. Coming back to Eurovision, perhaps this is why Xavier Bettel, current prime minister of Luxembourg, went to watch the Portuguese contest in Lisbon in person. Given his line of work, it would make sense for him to have associates in Portugal and for him to support said associates during Portugal's first-ever year as a Eurovision host country.

All this is to say that Luxembourg will, more likely than not, be a voting ally of Portugal, at least in the televote. This is good, since in an era of televote-only semifinals, a country on the periphery of Europe like Portugal could really use some extra points to get them across the line. If a few thousand Serbs in Switzerland can ensure that Switzerland gives Serbia at least 8 points year in year out, then it's pretty easy to imagine how the Portuguese Luxembourgers would make Luxembourg give 10 or 12 to Portugal in the televote.

And rest assured that Luxembourg will indeed have a valid televote; after all, they have double the population of Iceland, and if a country of 300,000 people can have a valid televote, why couldn't a country of 600,000 people? So Luxembourg, a new voting ally for Portugal. Who'd have thunk it?

5) Voting bloc

Speaking of voting, with the return of Luxembourg, we also have the return of the voting bloc that is Benelux. Benelux is short for Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and is a very close-knit bloc even outside of Eurovision. You might recall that both Belgium and the Netherlands also debuted in Eurovision 1956, and were also founding members of what would later become the European Union. They share much common history of being smaller northwestern European countries speaking Germanic languages with a history of dealing with France. (Incidentally, despite the bloc, and I only found this out a few days ago: Luxembourg does not border the Netherlands. They border France, Belgium and Germany.)

Now, I'm not enough of a Eurofan just yet to dive into 20th century Eurovision voting patterns, but I would not be surprised if the Benelux juries regularly voted for each other back then, since of course vous ne pouvez pas voter pour votre propre pays. And in 2023 alone, Netherlands gave 4 to Belgium in the jury, and 10 to Belgium in the televote, just after Finland. No doubt the Dutch were bopping along very hard to Because Of You. And when Luxembourg returns next year, this sort of voting pattern would make a lot of sense. Of course they could pull an Iceland, i.e. not really vote for the other members of the bloc despite being in said bloc (although Iceland did give 6 in the semi to the Faroese Reiley), but personally I reckon Luxembourg will be voting quite readily for their Benelux friends, both in the jury and televote.

6) Qualification

But of course to get jury points from the other Benelux countries, Luxembourg would of course first have to qualify since the semis are obviously televote-only now. And that's another concern that Luxembourg didn't really have in the 20th century; there wasn't really anything like semi-finals back then - Kvalifikacija Za Millstreet was rather its own beast - so now one wonders how much success Luxembourg will have in the televote.

If we look at the results of small countries like Malta or San Marino, it would suggest not a lot success will be had - this is after all one of the core reasons Luxembourg was always so reluctant to return to ESC. And it's not inconceivable that outside of the Benelux and maybe France, Luxembourg doesn't have a lot of voting allies. I don't know how much the mainland Portuguese care for their brethren in Luxembourg.

And the obvious unknown is Eastern Europe and beyond - will the people of Baku or Riga have even heard of the little French-speaking duchy? Does it even matter? Countries like Iceland are often said to be punching above their weight, implying that it's hard for small countries to do well. They don't exactly have diaspora, so there's few people outside of neighbours (if even that) that one can safely assume to be voting for them.

We've never had Luxembourg in an era of televote before. We've had Andorra and Monaco, and it didn't exactly go well for either of them, but perhaps Luxembourg has a bit more clout by simply being much larger than the other two. This is a question that won't be answered even if Luxembourg qualify, as we'd have to wait until the Sunday after the contest to find out whether Luxembourg qualified comfortably or by the skin of their teeth.

One fun thing though that people pointed out is that if Luxembourg qualify next year, they'll already have tied Ukraine's record of qualifying in every single semi-final they took part in. Of course this is assuming that Ukraine qualify, which I would be really surprised about if they didn't.

7) Success

This somewhat ties into the previous section, in that we'll have to see whether Luxembourg, like Iceland, can "punch above their weight", and do unexpectedly well for a country with under a million population. Will they be able to retain their status as a former Eurovision powerhouse? Could they manage to win Eurovision on their first year of return in 30 whole years? Personally, I've predicted that for 2024, Luxembourg will be 8th in the Grand Final, but let's see what happens, and let's see if they can maintain a hot streak years down the line if they do well in 2024.

8) Delegation

This is a segment that I didn't include in the PowerPoint slide, but thinking about it now raises some pretty interesting questions. As mentioned by the RTL Luxembourg CEO, the broadcaster will have the "exhilarating task" of selecting the 2024 delegation.

No doubt delegations existed in the 20th century - artists weren't just going to travel the contest and possibly book accommodation by themselves - but the role of the delegation and the specific posts within it have definitely changed in three decades. In the era of mass media, having a separate Head of Media for example would definitely be essential.

And indeed, who would they have on their delegation? Mostly people from Luxembourg and RTL, or would they also hire some French or Belgians with specialized experience? I mean, the Czech Head of Media is from Colombia, so anything's possible.

8) Pre-parties

Of course we can't talk about Eurovision without talking about the fun stuff. There's several pre-parties before the contest which happen every March and April in the past decade or so - Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Madrid just to name a few.

One new addition to the family in 2023 was the Polish Eurovision Party in Warsaw, which had previously been an afterparty of sorts taking place in July. This year, it was in April, and alongside a flurry of Eurovision 2023 artists, we also had some interesting guests.

One such guest was Anne-Marie David. If that sounds familiar to you, that's because she was in fact one of the artists who won for Luxembourg, specifically 1973 with the song "Tu Te Reconnaitras". The former winner, inexplicably to many of us, showed up in Warsaw (invited by the organizers of course) and reprised the classic ballad, with even some younger members in the audience appearing to sing along.

Was this perhaps a sign of things to come? Will we see RTL fork out the cash to fly the artist and the delegation all over Europe and perhaps even out to Tel Aviv? Only time will tell.

We can't even base their potential behaviour on what Belgium and the Netherlands do, because VRT and RTBF have pretty different philosophies when it comes to preparties. AVROTROS has a tendency of keeping their artist at home - S10 only sang at Amsterdam, and Mia and Dion only went out to Madrid in addition to that. Luxembourg is not going to have different broadcasters on alternating years, so it'll be interesting to see how RTL Luxembourg approaches preparties, if at all. If nothing else, I reckon they'd at least do Amsterdam.

10) Junior?

Now this is the big unknown. On one hand, Belgium hasn't done JESC in 10 years. On the other, the Netherlands are the only country to have done every single edition of JESC. Plus Malta's got a population similar to that of Luxembourg and are also very much active in JESC at the moment. Even San Marino did JESC at one point. I suppose it depends on how much RTL are into children's programming, but given the mood across Europe with several other broadcasters, I'd tend towards no.

Although one thing I didn't think about is this: Junior Eurovision this year is hosted in, wait for it, France! It's just next door, technically*. It's like San Marino in 2022 who joked that ESC2022 was the only contest that they could just drive to. Or like the Georgian delegation for JESC2022, who literally all just piled into one van and drove from Tbilisi to Yerevan. So yeah. No idea what's gonna happen with Junior, but I'm doubtful we'll see them in Nice. Imagine the scenes though if we do.

*: Nice is in the south and Luxembourg borders northern France, so it's still quite a long way out.

15/6 addendum: RTL has confirmed that they will *not* take part in Junior Eurovision 2023. No reason was given for this decision.

Notice that I didn't mention finances at all in my previous analysis. If what I'm reading is correct, RTL Luxembourg is RICH. So for all we know, the question really isn't "can we afford it", it's more "do we want to have it". If there's any country that can throw cash at Sacha Jean-Baptiste, Luxembourg is it. And while I really don't think RTL are the type to bribe juries or have SIM card farms, they certainly appear to have the funding necessary for very well-thought-out Eurovision entries. Pyro? Go for it. Rapid cuts for upbeat songs? Why not. Big props? If it fits the bill then absolutely. That's the kind of broadcaster we're looking at here, not say Georgia or North Macedonia who unfortunately can barely afford to show up.

Oh, and if you're genuinely wondering about the orchestra? If anything, it's easier for them, since they can just slap on a backing track, as opposed to needing someone to create an entire orchestral arrangement for a Eurovision song.

What's next?

Of course, with the return of Luxembourg, one naturally wonders what other countries we could see in Sweden next year. Let's go through a few of those, in descending order of probability, i.e. from the most likely to return/debut to the least likely to return/debut.

North Macedonia: almost 100% returning. If they don't return I'll eat my imaginary hat. They broadcasted Eurovision 2023 on MRT despite not taking part; they're doing Junior Eurovision 2023 in Nice later this year; they've ALREADY selected their singer for Nice, a certain 12-year-old Tamara Grujevska, becoming the first participating country who has selected their act; and they are having regular and open conversations in the MRT group about returning to Eurovision. They even clearly stated in their 2023 absence note that they have a clear view of returning in 2024. If that's not dedication to the contest, I don't know what is.

Monaco: 90% returning. They've got a set launch date for their new public broadcaster TVMONACO, and actually they're surprisingly similar to Luxembourg in the sense that the head of state wants them back in the contest. The broadcaster was in fact set up to in part broadcast things that Prince Albert is interested in, and one of those things is, you guessed it, Eurovision. Although unlike Luxembourg I reckon they'd almost 100% need to borrow some French singer to take part.

Montenegro: 40-50% returning. Their main issue is the budget, like so many other countries, but they are nowhere near as deep in shit as say Bosnia and Herzegovina. Plus the Montevizija page on Twitter did a little minigame of predicting 2023 results a few days before the contest took place. I do also think they have a bit of extra incentive in the form of Enisa. In case you didn't know, Enisa represented New York in the American Song Contest, but her parents are actually ethnic Albanians from a little town in Montenegro near the border with Albania, and indeed she herself speaks almost fluent Albanian, as proven in an interview (edit: multiple interviews) some months back. She released the song with which she was originally going to represent Montenegro in 2023, named "OLE", but obviously the participation fell through for financial reasons. When someone asked her on Twitter a few weeks ago if she'd still want to represent Montenegro, she responded saying "depends on if Montengro wants to qualify". So her interest is there, it's just whether RTCG can afford it after a year of absence.

Slovakia: 10%. As you may or may not know, the broadcaster of Slovakia, RTVS, changed their director-general last year. Many of us were hopeful that this could lead to Slovakia returning, but this did not materialize. But a few days after the Grand Final, it was reported that RTVS had made a statement on non-participation. Usually, they would trot out the line of "no interest in Slovakia". However, this time, they explained that their main issue was lack of funding, and in principle they would be greatly in favour of promoting Slovak artists on the European stage. If an artist wanted to represent Slovakia, they would theoretically have to fund most of their participation by themselves, which is what happened in 2012. Nonetheless, there were no statements in the article explicitly ruling out Slovakia from returning to Eurovision at some point. I don't see it being 2024, but life is unpredictable. Certainly I don't see them trotting out the "no interest" line again, since like I mentioned earlier, one of the ROTW countries that voted the most was Slovakia, although it was less than Luxembourg and Hungary.

Andorra: 5%. Allegedly they have the money to return now, according to 2009 representative Susanne Georgi, but the Andorran broadcaster appears just to not be interested. Georgi had been working for quite some time to get Andorra back to the contest. She even said in an interview that there are several private companies with the required funds to participate. The Andorran broadcaster RTVA simply stated that with the "downsizing of funding(??) and personnel" it is not possible to return, in the short or medium term. So don't rule it out, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it.

Kazakhstan: 3%. They didn't broadcast either the 2022 or 2023 contests. Plus the contest starts at 1am in Kazakh time, and that's not exactly prime time, is it. And since they're associate, they can really only do adult (or junior, for that matter) Eurovision if they're invited. There had been rumours that they'd be invited to the adult contest this year if they did well in Yerevan, but, well, last place in the jury vote isn't really a good look.

Bulgaria: 2%. Same situation as Slovakia actually - Intelligent Music Project funded their participation entirely by themselves, but the lack in funding is a lot more recent.

Hungary, Turkey: 0%. Too gay.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: 0%. Fazla (BiH 1994, now works in politics) said in an interview on the Euro Trip podcast that he is working to get BiH back to Eurovision by 2024, but I'm not sure he understands that they can't just suddenly pay off all the debt owed to the EBU and make up for years and years of funding shortfalls caused by the Republika Srpska broadcaster not paying their dues.

Kosovo: 0% (to me). From what I can recall, they're not even in the International Telecommunications Union, which is a prerequisite to join the EBU. And to join the ITU, they need to get recognized as a sovereign state first. Good luck with that.

Faroe Islands: 0%. I think they can do Junior Eurovision à la Wales (since obviously Denmark aren't in), but the adult contest? If the EBU accepted the Faroese broadcaster as a member, then they'd open a whole can of worms about how non-sovereign states could take part in Eurovision and the EBU more generally. And I really don't think the EBU are in the mood for that kind of stuff right now.

So those are my thoughts on the return of Luxembourg to Eurovision 2024! If you would rather hear me narrate the bulk of this blog's content in a video, you might want to check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRRB956u5zM