The Eurovision Song Contest will take place next year in Basel, a Swiss city bordering Germany and France, the organizers – the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) – decided on Friday.
The city, which competed with Geneva to host the popular song contest, applied with the motto “Overcoming Borders.” It sees itself and the region as the best example of how borders can become insignificant in people’s daily lives.
The German border region also plans to benefit from the popular singing contest: The mayor of the town of Lörrach, which is fewer than 10 kilometres from Basel, strongly advocated for it to be chosen over Geneva.
“We will make the Eurovision Song Contest from the three-country border area into the 40-country border area,” the independent politician, Jörg Lutz, said in Basel’s application video.
He said many Eurovision visitors could stay overnight in Lörrach.
In Basel, hotel prices had already skyrocketed to several hundred euros per night for simple accommodation even before the announcement.
