Was the inclusion of the Eurovision Song Contest in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s $120-million pledge to boost the CBC the federal budget’s most colourful sideshow?

Europe’s over-the-top event each May sees countries competing for the best original song. The contest is a seven-decades-old fixture on the continent’s calendar — its biggest cultural event and, since the introduction of public tele-voting in the late 1990s, its largest non-political election. The contest launched hits such as “Volare” and stars including ABBA, Julio Iglesias, Måneskin and, of course, Celine Dion. And in recent years, it has famously promoted Europe’s political values and social diversity — Conchita Wurst, the Austrian bearded drag queen, won Eurovision in 2014, and Ukraine won in 2022.

Eurovision is raucous fun, but in the face of financial and other crises at home, taxpayers may wonder: what’s in it for us?

Pundits responded with puzzlement to Carney’s announcement. Some noted an attempt to showcase Canadian content abroad. But after decades of studying the political history of Eurovision (Vuletic) and national identity (Lazar) we think Canada’s investment in Eurovision is best understood as a savvy nation-building tactic. 

Eurovision began in 1956 as an experiment by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), to test nascent TV technology by broadcasting the same program simultaneously, live, across Western Europe. The contest expanded post-Cold War, last peaking at 43 participants in 2018. CBC/Radio-Canada is an associate member of the EBU, which makes Canada eligible to participate.

Yet Eurovision’s development alongside European integration meant it acquired a political symbolism: Europe’s nations could brand and celebrate their individual character, while championing their joint normative enterprise: democracy, diversity, and co-operation. 

Nations celebrating themselves by striving against aligned others through play is not unique to Europe: Southeast Asia has its SEA Games, the Francophonie, a club of French speaking nations, hosts cultural competitions too. Competitors interact and nations watch: a strident spirit of partisanship alongside a sense that we, united as nations, compete united with other nations. Such events never evince politics — Eurovision ejected Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and talk of excluding Israel divides current participants. But the play-space allows for unity in even the most fractured internal political spaces.

Most obviously, then, participating in Eurovision allows Canada to signal a shift of playground: away from North American fracture and toward the trans-Atlantic. Away from authoritarianism and bullying, and toward an international relations centred on shared values — freedom, democracy, and free trade. Canada’s participation in Eurovision would be a continuous signal, deepening and sustaining those connections. This is an outward purpose. But joining Eurovision would have an inward, nation-building purpose too, and this is the real bargain. 

States have a tendency to decay, and increasing their lifespan requires drawing citizens’ attention back to a country’s purpose and principles. Machiavelli once called this “resuming the government.” Any event that brings citizens together with common purpose and fervour — Canadians watched this happen in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats — can play this role. But smart leaders don’t leave civic feeling to chance. Rather, to keep it humming, automate it: This is the purpose of public holidays, like Canada Day, but the Olympics and, yes, Eurovision can do that job, too. 

Regularly recurring reminders of national sentiment also engineer a sense we form part of stories and entities larger than us: a people, a culture, a state. We experience time passing collectively, in a way that preserves continuity of something greater. Playing together as one people, in a community of others, can makes us feel a little safer in our mortality. 

It is perhaps ironic, then that Canada seeks to join this feel-good club at a moment of mortal contest: members of the European Broadcasting Union,  vote on Israel’s participation in December, which may lead some EU countries to boycott next year’s show in Vienna. 

Canada may have found a good nation-building bargain. But in seeking to join the Eurovision party fashionably late, we may find it already over. 

---

Nomi Claire Lazar is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and the author of “Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time.”

Dean Vuletic is an historian of contemporary Europe and the author of ‘Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest.’

This article originally appeared in The Toronto Star on 20 November 2025.

Note: The views expressed in this post are those of the author, and not of the UCL European Institute, nor of UCL.

Photo: JJ from Austria stands on the stage with the trophy after winning the Grand Final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest, in Basel, Switzerland, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File).