You’ve been hearing it for weeks: Ukraine looks set to win the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. Bookmakers are still sure Kalush Orchestra with Stefania You will get the most votes. And so the question arises: if they win, will the whole party go to Ukraine next year?

Yes, says Oleg Pciuk, rapper from the Kalush Orchestra. As far as it is concerned, we will celebrate the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in a war-free Ukraine and the music will be made in a stronger and more beautiful country. This is how he put it in a press conference.

But yes, Psiuk can like it, it is very complicated in practice. The organization of the Eurovision Song Contest begins the moment the trophy is awarded to the winning artist. The regulated broadcaster will almost immediately enter into talks with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the process will begin in the following months.

Cities register and issue the so-called bidding book. He describes from A to Z what the city has to offer: the perfect venue for the festival, the number of hotel rooms, how easy it is to get to the city, and what are the plans for the Euro Village. These are just a few examples.

All these points are reviewed by the EBU and the organization and then the city that will be is determined. Things went relatively quickly: Duncan Lawrence won on May 18, 2019, then several cities scored, and on August 30, Rotterdam was the winner.

You will know the organized city in half a year

It took longer in Italy: Turin was elected in October. But still: there’s less than half a year between them. This means that in six months Ukraine will have to find several cities that can host an event for thousands of fans, hundreds of members of the press and dozens of artists. Even if the war ends immediately, they will continue to rebuild in Ukraine for some time.

The EBU does not necessarily have a firm solution in such cases, but in the past we have seen that it often happened that the winning country did not organize the song contest. For example, the Netherlands organized the musical event in 1980 because the winner in Israel had held a national day of mourning on the day the final was supposed to take place.

If Australia ever won the Eurovision Song Contest, the event couldn’t have gone that way. That is why, during the first participation, Germany and the United Kingdom were asked to take charge of the organization.

to the Netherlands?

Sits Bakker, executive producer of last year’s Eurovision Song Contest and now part of EBU .’s reference group, said Release That it would make sense if Ukraine’s victory depended on the countries that organized the event before, or not so long ago.

Officially, the EBU has not decided anything yet: it will not make any statements until the winner is really known. Then the EBU turns on the winner and makes a decision. And so you may have to have a tough conversation with Ukraine if the country really wants to hold the festival while the war is still raging. But the winner may not have been Ukraine at all, but the UK, or Spain or the Netherlands.