Tickets for Congratulations, the show celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, will be available as of 15th August, the European Broadcasting Union has informed esctoday.com. Meanwhile, eurosong.be, based on information from the Flemish broadcaster VRT, says that ticket sale starts on 22nd of August. To make everything even more complicated, host broadcaster DR “cannot confirm any date yet”. A doubtful situation…

The anniversary show, organised by Danish broadcaster DR, takes place on Saturday 22nd October 2005 at the Forum in Copenhagen. The special two-hour celebration show will be broadcast live at 21:00 CET in over 25 countries across Europe.

On the night, European viewers will televote to choose the most popular Eurovision Song Contest song. As with the Eurovision Song Contest, the centralized televoting system will be developed and coordinated by digame.de GmbH, an affiliate of Deutsche Telekom.

14 songs have been selected to take part in Congratulations. 10 of them were selected by the visitors of the official contest website eurovision.tv, the other 4 were added by the EBU:
� 1958 – Italy – Domenico Modugno – Nel blu di pinto di blu
� 1965 – Luxembourg – France Gall – Poupée de cire, poupée de son
� 1968 – United Kingdom – Cliff Richard – Congratulations
� 1973 – Spain – Mocedades – Eres tú
� 1974 – Sweden – ABBA – Waterloo
� 1976 – United Kingdom – Brotherhood of Man – Save your kisses for me
� 1980 – Ireland – Johnny Logan – What�s another year
� 1982 – Germany – Nicole – Ein bißchen Frieden
� 1987 – Ireland – Johnny Logan – Hold me now
� 1988 – Switzerland – Céline Dion – Ne partez pas sans moi
� 1998 – Israel – Dana International – Diva
� 2000 – Denmark – Olsen Brothers – Fly on the wings of love
� 2003 – Turkey – Sertab Erener – Everyway that I can
� 2005 – Greece – Helena Paparizou – My number one

Furthermore, the most memorable songs in 50 years of Eurovision Song Contest wil be performed as medleys.