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Countdown to Eurovision 2026!

 Eurovision season is here once again! The 2026 Grand Final will be on Saturday 16th May.

In 2026 it is the 70th Eurovision Song Contest, so a landmark year! It will be held in Vienna, Austria, after the 2025 contest was won by JJ with his song Wasted Love. The UK's entry is LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER with Eins, Zwei, Drei. 

I normally write two posts in the lead-up to Eurovision (occasionally a couple of "mini countdown" posts too). Here are my posts from last year: 

Countdown to Eurovision 2025!: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2025/05/countdown-to-eurovision-2025.html 

Eurovision Favourites 2025: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2025/05/eurovision-2025-favourites.html

 

And here is the first one of 2026! Today I'm taking a look at Eurovision spin-off contests. :) 

 

American Song Contest 

An American spin-off of ESC called the American Song Contest (ASC) took place in 2022. It ran from March to May and was won by AleXa (now also known as Kim Seri). She represented her home state of Oklahoma with the song Wonderland.

However, there has only been one season (or series as we say in the UK) to date, with no current plans for another one. It seemed to be more of a reality show competition format, (like Pop Idol, American Idol, The Voice etc.) because it ran weekly, so it was different to Eurovision in that way. It was cool to see an American version though. :) 

I've previously written several posts about ASC and AleXa, which you can see below

Eurovision Countdown- ASC 2022 Contestant AleXa: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/04/eurovision-countdown-asc-contestant.html

Eurovision Countdown- ASC 2022 Winner AleXa: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2023/04/eurovision-countdown-asc-2022-winner.html

In last year's Countdown to Eurovision 2025! post, I shared another update about AleXa: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2025/05/countdown-to-eurovision-2025.html

 

Here is AleXa's winning peformance at the Grand Final:

 


 

Eurovision Song Contest Asia 

And a new spin-off is set to launch later this year, based in Asia! The Eurovision Song Contest Asia (ESC) is set to take place on 14th November, in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) -which also organises the orignal Eurovision- Voxovation, and S20 Productions.

The idea of a version covering the Asia-Pacific region started as far as back as 2008 and an early planned show as Our Sound- The Asia Pacific Song Contes. It never got off the ground though.

ESCA was officially announced in March, with the launch of a website. So far, 10 countries have been confirmed to take part- Bangladesh, Bhutan,  Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. 

As someone who likes both Eurovision and Asian music, I'm looking forward to this! I hope that they will broadcast it online, as it's unlikely to be shown on TV here in the UK.

I think ESCA stands a better chance of being successful than the American Song Contest. First of all because it seems to be more of a traditional ESC fomat and also because as mentioned in this BBC article, music is taken very seriously in Asia. Not that it isn't in the US as well, but in K-pop (and to also C-pop and some other genres), there are survival shows designed to put together idol groups and live music shows are still popular (the latter has largely died out in the West).

K-pop (Korean pop) has gone worldwide and other Asian music genres  such as J-pop (Japanese pop), C-pop (Chinese pop) and South East Asian ones like T-pop (Thai pop) and V-pop (Vietnamese pop) are steadily gaining in popularity).

Here's a trailer for ESCA:

 


For more on Eurovision Song Contest Asia check out these links: 

ESCA page on the official Eurovision website: https://www.eurovision.com/asia/

Official ESCA site: https://eurovisionasia.com/

 

And for an introduction to Asian music, check out this post:

Asian Music- J-pop, K-pop and Beyond: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/02/asian-music-k-pop-j-pop-and-beyond.html

 

Plus, here is my most recent Asian music round-up post: 

Asian Music Round-up 2: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2022/03/more-asian-music.html

 

Hope you liked the post! :) I will wrote another one sharing my favourites next week.

 

The Eurovision Semi-Finals will be on Tuesday 12th May and Thursday 14th May. The Grand Final is on Saturday 16th May. 

 

Keep up with Eurovision news on the official site: https://www.eurovision.com/eurovision-song-contest/vienna-2026/

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