The Eurovision Song Contest Asia is about to become reality after almost two decades of projects, negotiations and postponements. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has spent years exploring different ways of taking the Eurovision concept to the Asia-Pacific region.
In 2026, the year the European contest celebrates its 70th anniversary, the project has finally taken the decisive step. The first edition takes place on Saturday 14 November from 14:30 CET (13:30 UTC, 20:30 ICT) at the One Bangkok Forum in Bangkok, Thailand, with 11 participating countries. Channel 3 is the host broadcaster, working with the EBU, Voxovation (the company that manages the rights to the Eurovision Song Contest‘s international expansion) and S2O Productions.
Officially, the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest Asia is the first multinational expansion of the Eurovision Song Contest to another continent. The exception is the American Song Contest, held in the United States in 2022, but that earlier venture used a different format and was not repeated.
Its modest reception shaped the approach taken with Eurovision Asia. The lesson drawn by the organisers was that the format has to keep its international character at its core: several countries, different cultural identities and one shared competition.
The first attempts to bring Eurovision to Asia
The idea of exporting the Eurovision concept to Asia has taken a great deal of work. One of the earliest attempts dates back to 2009, when an Asian contest based on the European model was proposed. Called the Asiavision Song Contest, it was to be developed by Asiavision Pte. Limited. There were plans for a months-long competition ending in a grand final, but it never took place.
The project took more concrete shape in 2016, when the EBU signed an agreement with Australian broadcaster SBS to formally explore an Asia-Pacific version of the Eurovision Song Contest. The public broadcaster was to work with production company Blink TV, which produces its Eurovision coverage, with the initial aim of staging the first edition in Australia in 2017.
The plan was to bring Asia-Pacific countries together in a single televised grand final. At the time there was talk of up to 20 participants and a potential audience of more than one billion people. Australia was put forward as the first host, with the event later moving around the region.
From Asiavision to Eurovision Asia
In 2017 the project was publicly renamed Eurovision Asia, and work stepped up to define its identity and format. However, the difficulty of closing deals between broadcasters, sponsors and territories, together with the logistical problems of a region with huge differences in time zones, languages and cultures, delayed the initiative. The SBS project was eventually shelved.
Over the following years an official website and promotional videos were launched, and fans were even invited to fill in a form suggesting which artists could take part, along with music styles, favourite songwriters and so on. New plans and possible host cities emerged, but none of them materialised.
In 2019, Eurovision Asia secured new investors and fleshed out its format. Unlike the Eurovision Song Contest, where the winner hosts the following year’s event, Eurovision Asia’s host cities would be chosen in advance. In fact, between 2019 and 2031 the contest was to visit Gold Coast, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong, among others. It was also decided that the voting system would be similar to Eurovision’s and that the winner would get a guaranteed place in the grand final of the European contest.
Despite interest from countries across the continent, no date was ever set for the first edition and it was postponed again. Later, in 2023, the website was updated with a new logo, but without any details of when the contest might happen.
Eurovision Asia becomes reality in Bangkok
The following years were marked by secrecy, although the EBU kept working towards bringing the Eurovision spirit to Asia. Rumours resurfaced in August 2025, when specialist media reported on an alleged Bhutanese national selection for a hypothetical Eurovision Asia to be held in Mumbai, India, later that year.
However, Martin Green CBE, Director of the Eurovision Song Contest, then denied that there were any plans to stage an official version of the contest in Asia. The EBU also asked Bhutanese broadcaster BBS not to use the Eurovision brand, and the videos of that national final were taken offline.
Voxovation’s preparations continued quietly over the following months, with no significant news, until the announcement on 31 March 2026. It was official: Eurovision was setting off on its Asian adventure.
The EBU and Voxovation confirmed that Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, would be the host city of the first edition, to be held on Saturday 14 November at the One Bangkok Forum.
This time, the organisers decided to keep the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ brand because, in their words, it is a name widely known to the public with undeniable international reach. The EBU now also groups all its contests under one international brand strategy in which ‘Eurovision’ is a proven asset.
The choice of Bangkok also carries symbolic weight. The organisers present the Thai capital as a meeting point of tradition, modernity and different Asian cultures.
How does Eurovision Asia 2026 work? Juries and an online vote decide the winner
The Eurovision Song Contest Asia sets out to bring the Eurovision philosophy to a different cultural setting. The contest keeps the core elements of the format, but shaped by the artists, broadcasters and viewers of the region.
The new contest uses a mixed format, modelled on the Eurovision Song Contest, in which national juries and viewers both play a decisive role in choosing the winner.
The final ranking combines two sets of points: votes from the professional juries of the participating countries, worth 50% of the result, and the public vote cast online, worth the remaining 50%. Its main distinguishing feature is a fully online voting system on vote.eurovisionasia.com/grandfinal, open to viewers in the participating countries and to fans in the rest of the world.
The launch of the Eurovision Song Contest Asia is much more than a new music event. For the EBU it is the first major attempt to take the format to another continent since its creation in 1956, and it comes in the very year the Eurovision Song Contest celebrates its 70th anniversary. The organisers estimate a potential reach of more than 600 million people in the region.
The future of the expansion will depend on how broadcasters, artists and audiences respond. The immediate priority is to deliver the first edition in Bangkok. If the model takes hold, Eurovision Asia could become a new permanent platform for the region’s music and, at the same time, a template for further international expansions of the brand.