The Eurovision Song Contest, cultural policy and security policy (2023–5): states, institutions, and the everyday

The annual Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is the world’s largest televised musical event, a touristic spectacle that attracts tens of thousands of travelling fans to host cities, and a space of international cultural co-operation that has also become an increasingly prominent public diplomacy vehicle, despite rules enforcing its “non-political” status. Its growing scale and the global geopolitical background have regularly entangled it in security policy questions. Case studies of the ESC’s 2023–5 editions hosted in Liverpool (on Ukraine’s behalf), Malmö and Basel, a period when public atmospheres regarding the major geopolitical narratives surrounding the event underwent dramatic change, illustrate both highly publicised and less visible impacts of security policy on the event. Following critical security studies approaches that extend “security” beyond state level, the article proposes a holistic approach to relations between cultural policy and security policy, encompassing macro-, meso- and micro-levels of states, institutions and the everyday.