The Dutch broadcasters AVROTROS, NOS and NPO have now announced the exact dates for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest 2021 in Rotterdam

It’s no surprise anymore that Rotterdam will host the next Eurovision Song Contest. This is the preliminary announcement of the Dutch broadcasters AVROTROS, NOS and NPO. It all depends on the development of the current Corona pandemic, which hopefully will be over next year. But it is to be expected that the health security level will be stricter and that there is more initiative to protect the singers, fans and journalists.

Instead of the real Eurovision Song Contest, the replacement show called “Europe Shine A Light” has been send out of the Hilversum TV studios. Regrettably, the original ESC has been cancelled due to the Corona pandemic, this was a sad but needful decision made by the host broadcasters, EBU and the city of Rotterdam.

In fact it has been a sad time these weeks, knowing that the Eurovision Song Contest will cancelled has urged a tremendous uncertainty for everybody involved in the ESC. There has been a huge discussion, if the ESC 2020 should be cancelled, postponed or broadcasted in a different way. At the end a cancellation was unavoidable due to the Corona pandemic.

Beside of the official program of the Dutch host broadcaster AVROTROS, NOS and NPO many EBU broadcasters have put Eurovision specials before or after the official show, which starts on Saturday 21.00 CET. Some countries like Germany have even two programs in parallel, the “German Eurovision Final” in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg with this year’s singer from Iceland, Denmark, Germany and Lithuania, while on the private channel PRO SIEBEN there will be Stefan Raab’s “Free European Song Contest” with some non-Eurovision singers in a race, co-hosted by Conchita Wurst.

Tonight would have been the night of the Semi Final 2. Therefore a replacement show has been initiated called “Eurovision Song Celebration Part 2”, to give all of this year’s entries a chance to be shown to a wider audience. In the first part on Tuesday, all participants from the Semi Final 1 plus three finalists have been introduced with their video clips. There were a lot of interactions with singers and fans, so there will be tonight.

Tonight the Dutch broadcasters AVROTROS, NOS and NPO will broadcast a Eurovision show with the songs, that would have performed tonight, in the correct order, which has been determined by the Dutch broadcasters. There will be several surprises.

Despite of this year’s cancellation, our team of eurovisionlive.com has made its annual voting – the star awards. This voting is based on our estimations and long experiences. There is no personal opinion involved, just the objective point of view how many chances the entries have to win the ESC. The maximum of stars is five with very good winning chances and no star for absolutely no chances.