There’s interest at the top — and we may soon see Luxembourg back at the Eurovision Song Contest.
RTL reports that the Grand Duchy is exploring a possible return for Eurovision 2024. They write:
“Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who is also Minister for Communications and Media, has addressed the subject [with the government]. Participation would come at a high cost, particularly if the country were to win the contest, but the the positive impact in return would be substantial.”
The Prime Minister is now leading a team to explore the possibility.
Luxembourg last competed at Eurovision 1993. Due to changes to the Luxembourg television system, the current EBU member broadcaster RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg — a Luxembourgish news channel — is different to the French and Luxembourgish Télé Luxembourg channel that organised Luxembourg’s Eurovision entries in its 20th-century heyday.
Luxembourg has a larger population than several regular Eurovision competitors, such as Montenegro, Malta, and Iceland. The landlocked country also has a substantial local Eurovision fanbase who would love to see Luxembourg return to Eurovision.
In 2016 the government debated a potential comeback, but RTL ruled out making a comeback due to financial reasons.
At the time, the then director of programming for RTL Luxembourg, Steve Schmit, explained that RTL is a small station that only produces two hours of local television per day. While RTL is a commercial channel that also has public service requirements, he explained that “our strategy is focused on information and magazines.”
Despite being one of the smaller nations in Eurovision (it has a similar population as Montenegro), Luxembourg was one of Eurovision’s heavy hitters. In the 37 years it competed, Luxembourg racked up five wins — matched by France, the UK and the Netherlands and topped only by Sweden and Ireland.
But Luxembourg usually looked abroad for its Eurovision acts. All five of its winners came from outside the Grand Duchy, mostly from France.
Yes, we want “fresh blood” in the contest. Welcome back, Lëtzebuerg!
i just hope they bring something interesting if they come back rather than being once again a france 2.0
People tend to say: hey, Luxembourg is really rich, so why does Luxembourg say that it’s not participating for financial reasons while Moldova and Georgia are there every year? Well, because it’s not the country that participates, but the broadcaster. And Télé Lëtzebuerg is a very small broadcaster which serves a small market and does not produce any entertainment content. It actually doesn’t have a huge budget. Meanwhile, the participation fee for the ESC is indexed on the national income, which is incredibly high in Luxembourg so the broadcaster would have to pay a relatively high fee. Also, I get… Read more »
It’s been the same story every year for a while now: Andorra 2022, Monaco 2023, and now Luxembourg 2024. I’ll hold my hopes out but I’ll give this time the benefit of the doubt, given that Xavier Bettel loves Eurovision
Turkey and Slovakia rumours as well
We’ve been through this song and dance before. A country that hasn’t participated in Eurovision for a long time drums up interest in a possible return, but it ends up going nowhere. I’m not raising my hopes for it but I would be surprised this does pan out.
While I admire the enthusiasm, I hope the prime minister also realizes that Luxembourg were actually one of the most overrated countries in older ESC, 2 or 3 wins at most would have been more than enough for them. Especially ’83, that one hasn’t aged well at all and should have never been in contention. Sorry.
Carola was the best, then Ofra Haza, then Corinne in third.
You won’t be going to the 40th anniversary concert next May, then?
Maybe Lara Fabian will get a second chance.
Or Plastic Bertrand
She represented them in 1988, and came fourth. Céline won that year, but both went on to have very successful French-language careers.
Vicky Leandros is doing her final tour before retirement. I don’t think we’ll see her at Eurovision again.
She is not fully retiring . It is only big concert tours that will cease . She may still record from time to time . There will be tv appearances too and she will sing at other events just not large concerts and tours that’s all . It is not so dramatic as the press likes to suggest as if she is totally disappearing . Arenas like the Schlagernacht series with various artists doing a spot may also still happen beyond 2023 and her tour does not end until 2024 with more international dates yet to be announced . I… Read more »
Well, I usually like to give credit to those trying to deviate from the norm in ESC so my ’83 favorites are actually Spain and Belgium, they barely got any points sadly. Out of the contenders I’d have chosen Carola as well, her best entry and one of Sweden’s too. Didn’t mind Israel and France either, the 80’s were not a very good time for the contest but I think this edition is actually the strongest of the decade.
I still regard Ofra Haza that year as one of the best Eurovision entries ever. I didn’t mind Corinne Hermès that much, it was a quality entry, but yeah very dated nowadays. But hey it’s almost 40 years ago…
Good music doesn’t date. A sign of quality is if the song still stands up with just voice and piano. This would.
Rubbish. Luxembourg were deservedly a Eurovision powerhouse. And we don’t all agree with your views on 1983. I think it was a perfect winner and well-deserved.
Don’t we get this story EVERY year?
Last year it was Monaco, but yeah I highly doubt this will go anywhere
Let ‘s see, I hope so, it would be nice.
I hope someone will return soon or maybe a new country will participate
The best thing however is that there isn’t a defined rule stating they must host the contest if they win. They could just have the runner up do it.
If they literally can’t, as was the case this year, and I think Luxembourg could make a very reasonable case that they literally couldn’t host anywhere.
They’ve done it four times before. I know things are different now, but there’s no reason not to use a smaller venue for just one year. I’d like that better than ruling out countries from ever hosting.
Same Andorra’s vibes: We could return in 2022 because Suzanne Georgi has found some money to participate.
In 2022: Meh, we won’t participate.
There’s a difference between an enthusiastic singer with pride in her second country and a country’s Prime Minister, though. But yeah, I will not get my hopes up either until I see it.
I wish they return but I’ll believe the words when they become facts.
Luxembourg, one of the richest countries in Europe, really mentions financial reasons? Please…
Yeah but it’s not how it works. We know the country is rich but we don’t know anything about RTL’s budgets. A country can be rich while not giving enough money for TV and culture.
They can make amazon pay for it.
A fair deal for never paying tax and treating their workers like dirt.
I mean it would certainly be interesting, but I never understood why Luxembourg was citing financial trouble as their reason for not competing. Isn’t Luxembourg among the richest countries in the world? To be fair though, Luxembourg DID mostly pull talent from abroad, so it’d be interesting that *if* they return, it’d be great to see more Luxembourgian representatives, not ones pulled from France or Belgium or Germany or whatever. (Yes I know their 5 winners are ALL not from Luxembourg)
Talk, talk, talk. I’m not going to hold out on thinking Luxenberg will return until something concrete is promised. I’m not betting the farm on that.
The prime minister loves the contest, he was even in Torino this year for the final. This is personal for him, so it could happen. Hopefully before he’s voted out. He’s been there a while now.
Bla bla bla parole parole…
Same.
It’s funny how they state “financial reasons” not to participate while we regularly have countries like Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, etc participating although these countries are also small and much less developed.
I guess Luxembourg simply has now wish or passion to do it. However, Italy was the same and then Italy returned (and they will not leave anytime soon!) and discovered the beauty of ESC so similar may happen with Luxembourg.
I meant “has no wish” :=)
It would be very nice to see them along with Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Andorra and a few other counties that haven’t participated in a while to come back. The more the merrier.
until there is an official confirmation to either return or not return, I just don’t really care. there have been many discussions in certain countries about their returns to Eurovision for the past three or four years, but it turns out that many of them are still out.