AVROTROS, the Dutch national broadcaster has confirmed to ESCToday that it yet to decide on its participation at the forthcoming 2025 Eurovision Song Contest.

The Dutch Eurovision 2025 participation continues to be in the limbo, following the disqualification of the Netherlands and Joost Klein at Eurovision 2024 in Malmo.

AVROTROS has confirmed to ESCToday that it will consider its potential Eurovision 2025 participation at a later stage following the EBU’s recommendations. The Dutch national broadcaster wants to wait and assess if the EBU’s recommendations will be put into action. Hence no decision has yet been made regarding the Netherlands’s participation at the forthcoming 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland.

Competing broadcasters have until mid September to send in their applications in order to compete at Eurovision 2025 and hereafter have a grace period to withdraw their applications without a financial penalty until mid-October.

AVROTROS gave ESCToday the following statement:

For now we are pleased that it seems the EBU is open to the serious recommendations which are suggested. However, we will wait and assess if the the recommendations will be put in actions by the EBU and will consider our participation in 2025 accordingly at a later stage.

Last month AVROTROS announced that it would not make any concrete decision regarding a potential participation at the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest until structural adjustments were implemented to focus on the artists and their musical message again.

AVROTROS released the following statement regarding its future at the Eurovision Song Contest on 6 June:

The Eurovision Song Contest was created to connect countries and peoples through music and to encourage mutual brotherhood. This should be the starting point for the organizers and all participating countries.

Until AVROTROS is confident that structural adjustments will be made to the artists and their musical message back in the center, we will keep participation in the Song Contest under consideration.

This week the EBU released a statement following an independent inquiry in the aftermath of the incidents which afflicted the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, where it stated that a series of changes would be implemented regarding the Eurovision Song Contest and two new positions would be created in order to oversee the work and structure at the ESC.

The Netherlands at Eurovision.

The Netherlands is one of the founder members of the Eurovision Song Contest having debuted at the very first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest in Lugano, Switzerland.  The Netherlands has won the competition five times (1957, 1959, 1969, 1975, 2019) and has hosted the competition five times (Hilversum 1958), Amsterdam (1970), The Hague (1976, 1980) and Rotterdam (2021).

The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest is scheduled to be held in mid May in Switzerland thanks to Nemo’s epic victory in Malmo.

Joost Klein represented the Netherlands at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest with his mega hit ‘Europapa‘.

Source: ESCToday/AVROTROS
Photo credit: Alma Bengtsson/ EBU