The national broadcaster of Australia, SBS, has stated that the channel will broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 in Malmö (Sweden), but they are not sure yet whether they will also compete in the contest of 2024.
Ongoing discussions
There are ongoing discussions between SBS, the national broadcaster of Australia, and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), about whether Australia will compete in the contest of 2024. SBS wants to be in the contest, but they do need to have a good conversation about the matter with the EBU, because the contract that SBS had with the EBU ended in 2023, and for now it has not been renewed.
The time to join the upcoming contest has passed, but Australia is still in the running to compete in the Eurovision 2024 contest. The deadline to withdraw without a financial penalty was on October 11th 2023.
Australia in the Eurovision Song Contest
Australia does not belong to the EBU’s territories and SBS needs permission of the EBU to compete in the contest once again. In 2015 Australia was asked to compete in the contest once, because the contest is majorly popular in this country and in 2015 the contest existed 50 years. In 2015 they came in 5th in the Grand Final (they did not have to compete in the Semis), and in 2016 they came in 1st in Semi-final 2 and 2nd in the Grand Final.
Eurovision 2023
In the contest of 2023 Australia was represented by the band Voyager with the song “Promise”; they ended 1st (of 16) in Semi-final 2 and in the Grand Final they eventually came in 9th (of 26).