Good news: Eurovision 2021 can proceed with a capacity of 3,500 spectators per show.
Back in March, Eurovision 2021 became a so-called FieldLab test event. This made it possible for organisers to allow a limited number of spectators to enjoy the show in Rotterdam’s Ahoy. However, due to increased hospitalisations as a result of the third wave of the pandemic in the Netherlands, several test events have had to be re-considered by local authorities in recent weeks. Thankfully for Eurovision fans, the Dutch caretaker government decided on Thursday evening that Eurovision 2021 can proceed with an audience.
That’s welcome news for worried fans. Following a spike in hospitalisations and rising case numbers, test events similar to Eurovision 2021 have received widespread criticism. A petition — started by employees of a local hospital against holding a test event with 10,000 visitors in the Southern Dutch city of Breda — gained almost 400,000 signatures. The test event was eventually cancelled.
Prior to attending any of the nine planned shows, attendees will have to undergo a rapid test to detect potential COVID-19 infections. Those who test positive will be barred from entering and will have to go into self-isolation at home.
Tickets purchases last year have, of course, been cancelled. All the ticket holders of the Eurovision 2020 event received refunds after the organisers initially froze the tickets after last year’s cancellation.
Dutch media are now reporting that ticket sales will begin on May 8 at 12:00 local time. Only people who purchases tickets last year are eligible to buy tickets for this year’s show.
The decision about allowing an audience was taken by the three relevant Ministers and one relevant Secretary of State. These included Ferd Grapperhaus (Minister of Justice), Arie Slob (Minister of Media), Hugo de Jonge (Minister of Health) and Mona Keijzer (Secretary of State of Economic Affairs). RTL Nieuws Political Correspondent Floor Bremer first tweeted the news after the meeting had ended in The Hague.
Read all our Eurovision 2021 news here.
I had two tickets for last years, but I won’t be attending on this occasion… Do you reckon I can give my purchase link to anyone willing to go? Maybe the link is associated to our names?
Tickets are first offered to previous 2020 ticket holders. That includes people from other countries, but they will not be exempt from any covid travel rules or bans that are in place in the Netherlands or in their own country. Coming to Eurovision as an audience member will not be labeled as essential travel, so rules for leisure travel apply. So you can try to get a ticket, but then it depends from which country you are whether or not you will actually be able to come, and what you will have to do to come (like testing, quarantaine in… Read more »
Amazing to hear that, I’m so glad that we will have an almost normal eurovision and The Netherlands deserves it after waiting so much! I hope the Dutch fans will enjoy this beautiful and joyful experience of watching eurovision live in the arena <3
Hello, I heard that you have to do a 10-day quarantine for foreigners coming to the Netherlands. Is that the case ?
I also see that you have to do a test 5 days after the show. So, these 5 days are also 5 days of quarantine?
Thank you for your reply.
What a relief! Now I guess getting the tickets back will be the hardest part.
By the way: in the mail we received as last years ticket holders I read the following words:
‘that personal code will give you access to the online ticket sales’
Does this mean that we’ll get to try to score tickets in a menu for all the shows again or do they mean for the show you had tickets for last year?
I believe you can only get tickets for the show you were supposed to attend last year 🙂
Ah, great!
People, including foreigners, that had tickets in 2020 are given priority. However, due to travel restrictions, I suspect that most of the audience will be Dutch.
I had tickets for SF2 last year and living relatively close to Rotterdam, I might still be able to attend the show this year. A great turn of events, for almost a year I thought I’d miss the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend Eurovision.
So happy! I got tickets for the grand final family show, and hoping to get the tickets back.
If not, dissapointment, but at least I’m happy there will be 3.500 people audience. I guess that will be good for the vibe in Ahoy ?!
the main picture of the article screams Wieder: Boring, generic, been done before, led screen and a catwalk somewhere. Next year whoever wins hire.local.talent.
downvote me as much as you want, his designs have 0 identity. Denmark 2014 is the opposite of what he does
He yesterday said in an interview that this year almost everything is different than previous years about the stage.. At first it looks normal and the same as previous years but there are many, many, many possibilities with this stage which are not shown yet..So wait until after the show and then come back to judge…
Can’t believe that in terms of show we will have nearly normal Eurovision! 🙂 I must say I was so pessimistic about everything back in January when we didn’t even know which scenario would be chosen and would all participants be able to travel to Rotterdam.
Can I go to the Netherlands from outside the EU with this ticket? I from Russia.
I doubt, but you’d need to wait for them to release the tickets and if there are no restrictions for fans outside the country, then go for it. But remember that you’d need to pay for PCR covid tests so extra costs.
You can if you get a visa from Russia. Also you will have to quarantine upon the arrival to Rotterdam.
I have visa, and totally up for doing PCR etc., The only problem is that the Netherlands are close for Russia now( I hope there will be an information for foreigners
If Russia is banned, then you won’t make it unless you travel via a second country? Still a bit risky so I’d advise you to wait for one more year.
They will not exempt eurovision ticket holders from current travel rules / bans, so if there is a ban on leisure travel from Russia to the Netherlands, you will not be able to come I’m afraid.
In the Netherlands it is communicated that this year only Dutch people can attend the festival.
Curious to see if most of the flags in the venue will be Dutch or from other countries too??
I don’t think you’ll see much flags anyways. The entire audience is seated on the rings, there’s no audience on the floor.
but did they ban flags? seated audience can still bring flags in general.
Probably no flags at all since there only will be seated audience. Kinda hard to bring a flag with you..
but seated audience can bring flags (see previous editions), it wasn’t a privilege of the standing area fans. Also, flags do not transmit the virus..
so basically will they remove the seats (right and left from the stage) or keep all of the seats and only the standing area will be excluded due to the green room being there? I think they could add a bit more to have 5,000 fans in each show. Barcelona did a test concert with 5,000 fans. If you are vaccinated and tested negative, it should be fine. It looks awesome and I am sorry for the Dutch people not being able to attend. I am also sorry for the locals that no foreign fans and press will be allowed.… Read more »
The experiments are only on a small scale. If you only do a few of those tests they will mean next to nothing. Maybe the events are safe. Or maybe they were just lucky. What we can say for sure is that if an experiment like this gets unlucky then the numbers in the crowd will matter a lot
You have to take into consideration that we’re not doing too well with COVID in NL at the moment. Accepting 5k (or more) people would send the wrong message.
Additionally, a few weeks ago, a testing festival (10k in the open air) was cancelled after a petition demanding the cancellation had gotten hundreds of thousands of signatures. Therefore, 3500 people nine times is really not that bad.
Yes, 3.5k is better than nothing for sure, but if everyone is tested/vaccinated and tracked before and after the shows, it could be a success.
NL is doing bad yes but they don’t have restrictions that other countries had (Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, France), they were pretty free without masks outdoors. I know the situation there because i have family. They’re doing parties outdoors which is so weird.
If they are doing parties, they are breaking the Dutch Corona restrictions, indoors or outdoors :). The only parties allowed are those conducted under supervision of the fieldlab programme. Outdoors, the Dutch rules say you have to keep 1,5 meter distance from everyone outside your household, which is not really possible at a party.
parties=bday parties is what i meant.
Parties outdoors? Not really, one was planned, but cancelled
You mentioned Sweden that won eurovision 2 times in 4 years but don’t forget that Ireland won eurovision 3 times in a row (but The Netherlands is definitely not going to win this year)
I am not saying Netherlands is winning ESC this year but i said i was hoping they would win again in the near future because they absolutely can do it since they took it seriously.
Ireland won 3 times in a row in the 90s when juries were voting and there was no televoting. They wouldn’t win 3 times in a row with televoting.
Better than zero
I got all excited but then I saw that the limited view seats are gone, so now we can’t afford to go to the final anymore lmao.
Better than nothing, although they could’ve at least allow the audience to stand under the stage (as I recall that was the case during previous “test events”).
Still, I think it would’ve been better if they moved the contest to some more open country and allow NL to host the next year instead, but that decision would obviously have to be made a lot earlier.
Anyway, this is a fairly good news.
Interesting suggestion. I’d vouch for Australia!
But then what do you do with the 2021 winner? They would want to host next year as well. Apart from that, what eurovision competitor is more open at this point? Only Israel I guess? And Australia maybe, but that is absolutely not an option during the pandemic. The Australian delegation won’t even come to Rotterdam this year. They will do a live recording of their act.
Not going to lie, I’m so excited for this! It will be a bit different, but for me, it’s the first return of some kind of normality and honestly, with the arena and stage looking as good as it does, it won’t be much different than usual.
I’m so happy! I bought tickets for the grand final family show last year, so hopefully I can buy them again 🙂
I hope you didn’t get the limited view tickets back then because those are gone now :’)
I had standing tickets, but I will receive a code for early acces to the tickets. So fingers crossed…
I have the same
Buying a ticket will be a bloodbath!
Not really, cause only people that had a ticket last year get access. A lot of people also won’t be able to go this year, so I think chances are 50/50?
any news is team wiwi will be allowed to attend on the press side of things? Your behind the scenes access during the rehearsals is always worth dabbing in to.
I believe William mentioned that Suzanne was going to be with him in Ahoy in passing in one video so while they haven’t said anything official, I think William and Suzanne will be there at least.
They will allow a maximum of 500 accredited press members on site, and another 1000 to an online press center with camera access to rehearsals, interview spots and press conferences. So hopefully they were able to get a few of those 500 on site accreditations.
Fantastic news. I miss people having a great time so muchhhh!
Might be less than previous years but we’ll be able to feel the interaction from the public so I’m pretty happy!
Great news for the Dutch fans and for all the artists who get to perform in front of a crowd! This ESC will be amazing. I am so happy!
Everyone rather get a RT-PCR done. I tested Rapid test negative and had a positive RT-PCR . It’s for the best . Thankyou
I also got a RT negative and a PCR positive but that depends on the amount of viruses you have and how infectious you are (I wasn’t infectious when I first got the RT but three days later, I was). As long as people are not infectious, there’s nothing to worry about.
A negative Rapid Test doesn’t rule out infectivity. It’s not that you were infections 3 days later and tested positive by RT-PCR . The RT-PCR is a more sensitive test and is likely to pick up lower viral loads. You are infections if you have the virus and have no symptoms or even test negative .
Multiple people have tested RT-PCR negative , Rapid Negative and their CT showed active COVID. A negative test doesn’t rule out infectivity , but it definitely makes it less likely that someone is infectious. Thankyou.