Out with the old and in with the new! The esctoday.com team would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year! May 2013 enter your lives bringing you all the best of health, wealth, prosperity, love and happiness. May all your resolutions and wishes come true in 2013. One more year has gone by, one more Eurovision season is over thus making way to the 2013 season.

All in all, 2012 has been an exciting year specially as esctoday.com celebrated its 12th anniversary, founded in 2000 by Sietse Bakker, and now under the baton of Michalis Vranis. 12-12-12 will go down in history as a memorable day for esctoday.com, when the website was relaunched with a  newly revamped, fresh, innovative and modern version.

The esctoday.com family of team members has grown immensely since its early days with editors from all over Europe. In 2013 we will be welcoming a brand new set of editors. 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 Azerbaijan hosting the Eurovision Song Contest. Ictimai, the Azerbaijani public broadcaster excelled in organizing an extraordinary Eurovision with an impressive stage and a magnificent show that mesmerised European viewers. A total of 42 countries competed for the grand prix in Baku. For the very first time in Eurovision history the contest kicked off at midnight local time, hence making Baku the eastern most location to host the event. Loreen took Europe by storm with her song Euphoria, thus giving Sweden its 5th 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.

2013 will be taking us to the land of the Vikings, ABBA, Ikea, Volvo, Saab, schlager music, Melodifestivalen and beautiful forests. Yes, we are talking about none other than Sweden. Malmö  will play host to the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, where 39 countries are scheduled to compete at the Malmö Arena  on the 14th, 16th and 18th of May!

Out with the old and in with the new!

The new year will be bringing changes to both esctoday.com and the Eurovision Song Contest. For the very first time in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest there will be no draw to determine the running order of the participating countries, this task will lie in the hands of the host broadcaster. The rehearsal schedule for the 2013 edition of the contest has been revised: each country will only give 1 press conference, the first rehearsals of the semifinalists will be closed to the press, the rehearsals will kick off on 6 May, whilst the press center will open on 10 May. Eurovision fan clubs have been alloted standing tickets for the shows, instead of seating tickets.

2013 will also bring about many pleasant changes to our beloved website. Many surprises and changes are in store for our readers. New editors will be joining our team, various new features will be added,etc.

The 2013 Eurovision season has already kicked off, we already know the names of the representatives from The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Lithuania, Georgia, Belarus, Belgium, Albania, Ukraine ,Montenegro and FYR Macedonia. National finals for the 2013 Eurovision season kicked off in 2012 and more national finals and special presentation shows are scheduled to be held all over Europe in January, February and March. We will miss Bosnia Herzegovina, Portugal, Slovakia and Turkey at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, countries that have opted  to withdraw from the event. Poland, Monaco, Morocco, Luxembourg, The Czech Republic and Andorra, informed 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 2013 season! We wish you the best of health, happiness, peace, prosperity and love for the coming year! Thank you!

 

Abba – Happy New Year