Will we see RTK and Kosovo debut at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest? Much has been speculated regarding the country’s potential EBU membership and eventual Euroviision participation in recent years. ESCToday decided to contact the EBU to shed more light on this matter.

The EBU has confirmed to ESCToday that it has no plans to invite Kosovo to partake at the forthcoming 2021 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam next year. The EBU gave the following statement to ESCToday:

At the present time there are no plans to invite Kazakhstan or Kosovo to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021.

RTK,  the Kosovan national broadcaster, is quite keen to partake in the Eurovision Song Contest but it does not meet the requirements to become an active EBU Member.

Kosovo is not a member of the ITU (International Television Union), one of the key requirements to become an active EBU member. Thus RTK is not an EBU member and is currently ineligible to join the contest. The country is neither a member of the United Nations or the Council of Europe. The Eurovision Song Contest has been broadcast live in the Balkan country in recent years.

Regarding Kosovo’s Eurovision pontential Eurovision debut the EBU states:

Kosovo cannot take part in the Eurovision Song Contest because their public broadcaster is not a Member of the EBU. The statutes of the EBU say that a Member must come from a country that is a Member of the International Telecommunications Union or is a Member of the Council of Europe. Kosovo is in neither. The EBU helped set up Kosovo’s public service broadcaster RTK in 1999 and it continues to work closely with RTK to protect public service media in Kosovo.