It all began in 1956, when Europe was still recovering from World War 2. One day, some guy decided: "Hey, why not unite Europe through music? Everyone loves music, right?"
And Eurovision Song Contest was born. On the course of over 60 years, this mu...
(In this section, we'll approach more the participating countries and what it requires to actually join Eurovision Song Contest. I'm trying my best to clarify everything as much as I can, so I hope you'll understand me. Alright? Let's move on.) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, regarding the Eurovision countries, most of you might expect that the participants are mainly in the European area.
Indeed, the majority of the countries are included in the European continent or at least share a little bit of their territory on the European side (mostly countries which also have double territory, like between Europe and Asia, such as Russia and Turkey).
However, that's not often the case. Some nations do indeed take part in Eurovision due to geographical location, however there's few countries which ain't technically European but still participate in Eurovision.
So, how's that?
Well, there's a thing called EBU (or European Broadcasting Union) which quite might explain everything. It's the world's leading alliance of public service media, with 73 members in 56 countries in Europe & 33 associates in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia.
Needless to mention further, they're behind Eurovision Song Contest and its other spin-offs, which we'll cover in much more detail on another day.
Now, if you're in EBU as associate or even a member, you can enter Eurovision Song Contest as long as they respected the actual rules and of course, if they express their wish to join.
Let's start with some nations which aren't technically European, but still compete in ESC for quite a while.
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Israel (applied for membership in 1957, debuted officially in 1973)
When it comes to the earliest known non-european nation which applied for Eurovision, that title would go to Israel. Israel has been among us since 1973, and managed to win 3 times (1978, 1979 & 1998).
Competing 40 times since its debut, this little nation managed to stand out quite a lot musically-wise, incorporating their cultural twist in their songs.
However, Israel is also pretty much known as "the only country which was unable to defend the title", because IBA (their broadcaster at the time) was financially unable to host the contest in 1980 and because the date chosen coincided with a memorial day, forcing them to withdraw in the end.
As mentioned previously back in this "book", one of the winning country's privileges were hosting the upcoming edition in their country.
