SSR-SRG, the Swiss national broadcaster, has announced today that the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest Host City race has kicked off in Switzerland, the potential Swiss cities have received the coveted detailed requirements bidding catalogue. 

The Swiss national broadcaster has extended an invite to a number of Swiss cities for submitting their respective Eurovision 2025 hosting bids to the EBU and the Swiss Eurovision 2025 Host broadcaster. SRG-SSR has unveiled today that the pontential candidate cities have received the so called City Bid.

Cities vying to host the forthcoming 2025 host cities have circa a month to prepare their bid books. The deadline for the bid book submission has been set for the end of June. Herafter the SSR-SRG and the EBU will evaluate all the submitted bids and shorlist them. Then EBU and SRG officials will visit candidate cities in order to inspect the venues, infrastructure, logistics, side event venues, financial contribution the shortlisted cities have to offer. The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest host city is expected to be unveiled by the end of August.

The Eurovision 2025 Bid Book requirements will be not made public. SSR- SRG will not disclose the names of the applicant cities, but if a candidate city wishes to announce that it is bidding to host the event it can do so at its own discretion. The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest is scheduled to be held in mid-May, the exact dates of the competition are yet to be confirmed.

So far four cities have showcased their interest in hosting Eurovision 2025: Zurich, Geneva, Basel and St. Gallen.

SSR/SSR’s official press release reads:

It was not even three weeks ago – on 11 May – that Nemo won the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland in the Swedish city of Malmö with an extraordinary song and an outstanding performance. Traditionally, the winning country hosts the ESC the following year. As time is short, a 12-person SRG task force, which was set up in anticipation ahead of the ESC, started working on the preparations the very next day after Nemo’s victory. Organising the world’s biggest music contest in just a year is a mammoth task. Indeed, the ESC is much more than a TV show, it is a major event over several days.

The very first thing to do was to customise the very extensive requirements catalogue (known as the «City Bid Book») of the European Broadcasting Union EBU to the Swiss context for candidate cities. This week, the City Bid Book was sent out to all cities competing to host the ESC in 2025. SRG does not disclose which cities they are, but candidate cities are of course free to publicise the fact that they are running. The requirements catalogue sent out to cities is not made public either. 

The cities now have until the end of June to work with the venue operators and the cantons to prepare their bids on the basis of the City Bid Book. The winning city is scheduled to be announced in late August. The ESC 2025 will be held in mid-May, but the precise date has yet to be decided.

Switzerland will be hosting the Eurovision Song Contest for the third time in the history of the competition, thanks to Nemo’s epic victory earlier this month in Malmo, Sweden.

Source: SSR-SRG/ESCToday
Photo credit: SSR-SRG