OVSC36

## OrbisVision Song Contest #36  *Music Unites People*

 Queen performing "Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt" live from their 1986 concert in Budapest

## Participants

### Debuting

 Laos
  Nepal
  Samoa

### Returning

 Åland Islands
  Bosnia and Herzegovina
  Cameroon
  Czechia
  Denmark
  Germany
  Iceland
  Liechtenstein
  Mexico
  Moldova
  Montenegro
  Netherlands
  Romania
  Taiwan
  Zambia

### Withdrawing

 Andorra
  Armenia
  British Virgin Islands
  China
  Chile
  Christmas Island
  Estonia
  Greece
  Italy
  Jersey
  Luxembourg
  Malaysia
  Monaco
  Northern Mariana Islands
  Norway
  Poland
  Puerto Rico
  Russia

## Voting

### System

Each country awards a set of 1 - 7 points, followed by 8, 10 and 12 points for their top 3 favourite songs

### Winner

 United Kingdom
 "Houdini" by Dua Lipa

After their victory in Istanbul, OVSC came to the Hungarian capital of Budapest for the first time!

This was Hungary's first time hosting the contest, as well as the 19th time a European country hosted.

The contest consisted of 3 shows, 2 semi-finals and a Grand Final.

44 countries have confirmed their participation.

The United Kingdom won for the third time in its history at the contest, thanks to Dua Lipa and her song "Houdini". She also got the highest-ever winning score in OVSC history with 195 points. This was also the 18th time a European country had won OrbisVision.

## Location

### Host city

Budapest is the capital city of Hungary. With a unique, youthful atmosphere, world-class classical music scene, a pulsating nightlife increasingly appreciated among European youth, and last but not least, an exceptional offer of natural thermal baths, Budapest is one of Europe's most delightful and enjoyable cities. Due to the exceedingly scenic setting, and its architecture it is nicknamed "Paris of the East".

The modern-day Budapest results from the amalgamation of two historic cities lying right opposite each other over the Danube river.

Buda is the western (left) bank side, with the high hill atop which the Buda castle sits. Pest is the relatively flat eastern (right) bank side, with the Parliament, numerous other stately buildings, and busy streets retaining all their 19th century architectural heritage.

In 1987 Budapest was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site for the cultural and architectural significance of the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue.

The first settlement on the territory of Budapest is accounted to Celtic tribes. During the first century CE, the Roman fortification on the territory of present-day Óbuda (now part of Budapest) gradually developed into the town of Aquincum which became the capital city of the province of Lower Pannonia in 106CE.

The Romans founded a fortress known as Contra Aquincum on the other side of the river which is assumed to have developed into the later town of Pest.

This was part of the Limes, marking the eastern border of the empire, and was gradually given up by Rome during the early fourth century, becoming part of the Hun empire for a few decades.

The Huns were a confederation of various nomadic nations and tribes inhabiting the Eurasian steppe, and not Magyars, but Attila, the King of the Huns, is considered a national hero and Attila is a common given name in Hungary.

Once the horse-riding Magyar (Hungarian) tribes arrived in the Carpathian Basin in 896CE, Óbuda served as the seat of the Magyar high-chieftain Árpád.

After a century marked by frequent raids on Christian western Europe, the erstwhile Hungarian prince Géza realised that converting to Christianity was the key to survival in Europe. The Christian Kingdom of Hungary was founded by the crowning of his son, Saint Stephen on 1 January 1001 (or possibly Christmas Day of 1000).

As visitors will quickly realise, Saint Stephen became an omnipresent national symbol, as did the artefact known as Saint Stephen's Crown (the Holy Crown of Hungary) which was regarded as a legal entity that was by law equivalent to the country itself during medieval times.

It is still unclear whether the millennium-old crown used in this function for many centuries and shown in the Parliament today, was used by Saint Stephen.

In the following centuries, Buda emerged as the most important royal seat.

In 1241/42 the Mongol Empire conquered the territory along with large parts of Europe, this short but devastating conquest of the country is still remembered as *Tatárjárás*, the name reflecting the erroneous confusion of Mongols and Tatars at the time.

Medieval Hungary reached its zenith under King Matthias, the vividly remembered Renaissance ruler whose patronage of arts and sciences made Hungary, a notable power at the time, the first European country to adopt the Renaissance from Italy.

However, after residing in Buda for decades, he moved his seat to Vienna in 1485 for the last five years of his life after defeating the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III.

In 1541, Buda and Pest fell to the Ottoman Empire and were taken back in 1686, when the Hapsburg Empire centred in Austria conquered the country on its way to becoming a major European power. Marks of these two cultures are still part of everyday life in Budapest.

After the anti-Hapsburg revolution in 1848–49 (defeated through the decisive help of the Russian Czar) the 1867 Compromise with a weakened Vienna made Buda the capital of a near-autonomous Hungary, a large, multi-ethnic kingdom comprising half of the newly created Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. In this peculiar double-state the monarch was Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, two autonomous realms.

The following half century marked by peaceful development counts among the most successful times in the history of the country and its capital. With the 1873 unification of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda, the city of Budapest was created.

It saw a leap in terms of industrialisation, urbanisation, population, and the development of a capitalistic society.

It even aimed at rivalling with Vienna, the Millennium in 1896, marking a thousand years of Hungary, offered the perfect excuse for large-scale projects such as the Parliament, Vajdahunyad Castle, or the Grand Boulevard (Nagykörút), the first electric underground railway in the world (now the Metro yellow line).

Budapest was transformed to a world city during these decades, enriched by Austrian, Jewish, Slovakian, Serbian, Croatian, Roma and other cultural influence.

This age is remembered as the 'Monarchia' (or as 'K. u. K.', abbreviation for Imperial-Royal in Austria and other parts of the Empire) and associated with the rule of Franz Joseph I. (I. Ferenc József) who died in 1916 after 68 years on the throne.

In this period, the city was the home of two world-famous Hungarian inventors, the father of the electric locomotive, Kálmán Kandó, and inventor of the match, János Irinyi, and of two renowned composers, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály.

There is no other European city which had given so many Hollywood filmmakers in the early 20th century, such as Budapest.

Neither the Habsburg empire nor Hungary survived World War I in their previous form, leaving Budapest as the capital of a now independent Hungary which lost two thirds of its territory, most of its non-Magyar population, and a few million Hungarian speakers, to neighbouring countries.

The city's population reached one million around 1930. During the interwar years under the rule of regent Miklós Horthy, a former Admiral of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, Hungary became an ally of Germany.

Near the end of World War II, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary after it attempted to negotiate separate peace with the Allies, and eventually installed a bloody dictatorship putting the hitherto fairly unimportant Nazi Nyilaskeresztes (Arrow Cross) party in charge.

While practically all of the 400,000 Jews in the countryside were murdered by German Nazis and their Hungarian nyilas sympathizers, roughly 60% of Budapest's Jewish community was saved during the Holocaust.

People who are remembered for helping the local Jewish community include Raoul Wallenberg, the famous Swedish diplomat, who organised the distribution of Swedish passports by his embassy to as many Jews as possible, and the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, who, pretending to be a Spanish diplomat, rescued many thousands of Jews, but there were many other foreigners and Hungarians who participated in this effort.

Air raids and a terrible three-month siege towards the end of World War II resulted in the death of over 38,000 civilians and the destruction of much of the once so lively city.

After the war, Budapest slowly recovered and became a showcase for the more pragmatic policies of Hungary's hard-line Communist government under the dictatorial rule of Mátyás Rákosi.

The city was, however, also the main site of the 1956 uprising which was successful in installing a reform-oriented (albeit communist) government of Imre Nagy.

This was swept away before long, after the Soviet leader Khrushchev decided to send in the tanks feeling that Hungary was slipping away from under Moscow's control.

    The Soviets installed János Kádár as the leader of the communist state who, after over thirty years of controversial rule, was voted out of leadership in 1988 by the central committee due to health issues, and died in 1989.

Since the peaceful 1989 'system change' (Rendszerváltás) which was achieved as a compromise between reformist party forces and the opposition (notably including a younger self of the current prime minister, Viktor Orbán), Budapest transformed in appearance and atmosphere, a process further accelerated by the country's long-awaited joining with the European Union in 2004.

### Venue

The MVM Dome, sometimes known as the Budapest Handball Sports Hall (*Budapesti Kézilabda Sportcsarnok* in Hungarian) and formally known as Budapest Multifunctional Arena, named after Hungarian power company MVM Group, is Europe's largest handball arena located in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary.

Opened on 16th December 2021 and designed by Hungarian architect György Skardelli (who also designed the Puskás Arena football stadium), it hosted the 2022 European Men's Handball Championship, and will host the 2024 European Women's Handball Championship, the 2027 World Women's Handball Championship and the Final Four of the Women's EHF Champions League from 2022 onwards.

It's also capable of hosting concerts as so far, it's seen the likes of Enrique Iglesias, Volbeat, Michael Bublé, Plácido Domingo, $uicideboy$, Roger Waters, Peter Bence, Mötley Crüe & Def Leppard, Sir Tom Jones and Postmodern Jukebox perform in the arena.

## Participating countries

### Semi-final 1

Ireland, Yemen and Jamaica will vote in this semi-final. Qualifiers are marked in blue.

### Semi-final 2

Hungary, Sweden and Guam will vote in this semi-final. Qualifiers are marked in blue.