Welcome 2016! The ESCToday team would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year! May 2016 enter your lives bringing you all the best of health, wealth, prosperity, love and happiness. May all your resolutions and wishes come true in 2016. One more year has gone by, one more Eurovision season is over thus making way to the 2016 season.
All in all, 2015 has been an exciting year specially as esctoday.com celebrated its 15th anniversary, founded in 2000 by Sietse Bakker, and now under the baton of Michalis Vranis.
The ESCToday family of team members has grown immensely since its early days with editors from all over Europe. It has indeed been a pleasure for the whole team to cover the Eurovision Song Contest throughout all these years, and bring you the latest news and developments. We are very grateful and thankful to all our readers.
The highlight of the year was Austria hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. ORF, the national Austrian broadcaster excelled in organizing an extraordinary Eurovision with an impressive stage and a magnificent show that mesmerised European viewers. A total of 40 countries competed for the grand prix in Vienna. Australia debuted in the competition thus Building Bridges from Europe to Ocenia.
Måns Zelmerlöw took Europe by storm with his song Heroes, thus giving Sweden its 6th Eurovision victory. This year’s winning entry has enjoyed massive success throughout the European continent, charting high and becoming one of the most successful songs of the year in Europe.
2016 will be taking us back to the land of the Vikings, ABBA, Ikea, Volvo, Saab, Schlager music, H&M,Melodifestivalen and beautiful forests. Yes, we are talking about none other than Sweden. Stockholm will play host to 2016 the Eurovision Song Contest, where 43 countries are scheduled to compete at the Ericsson Globen Arena on 10, 12 and 14 May!
Surprises in 2016
2016 will also bring about many pleasant changes to our beloved website. Many surprises and changes are in store for our readers in the coming year.
The 2016 Eurovision season has already kicked off, we already know the names of the representatives from The Netherlands, Bosnia Herzegovina, Georgia, Albania, Russia, Armenia, Montenegro, Cyprus and FYR Macedonia. National finals for the 2016 Eurovision season kicked off in 2015 and more national finals and special presentation shows are scheduled to be held all over Europe in January, February and March. We will miss Portugal, Slovakia and Turkey at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, countries that have opted to be absent from the event. Monaco, Luxembourg and Andorra confirmed to ESCToday.com that they had no intention to return to the contest next year.
The entire ESCToday.com team would like to wish each and everyone of you, all over the world a Happy New Year and a Happy Eurovision 2016 season! We wish you the best of health, happiness, peace, prosperity and love for the coming year! Thank you!
