International song competition
The Eurovision Song Contest 2015 was the 60th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Vienna, Austria, following the country's victory at the 2014 contest with the song "Rise Like a Phoenix" by Conchita Wurst. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster (ORF), the contest was held at the Hall D of the Wiener Stadthalle and consisted of two semi-finals on 19 and 21 May, and a final on 23 May 2015. The three live shows were presented by Austrian television presenters Mirjam Weichselbraun, Alice Tumler and Arabella Kiesbauer, while the previous edition's winner Conchita Wurst acted as the green room host.
Forty countries participated in the contest, with Australia making a guest appearance. Cyprus and Serbia returned after a one-year absence, while the Czech Republic returned after its last participation in 2009. Meanwhile, Ukraine did not participate due to financial and political crises related to the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The winner was Sweden with the song "Heroes", performed by Måns Zelmerlöw and written by Anton Malmberg Hård af Segerstad, Joy Deb and Linnea Deb. This was the country's second win in three years, having also won in 2012. Sweden won the jury vote and had the highest combined points, but placed third in the televote behind Italy and Russia. Overall the latter two countries placed third and second respectively, and Belgium and Australia rounded out the top five. Further down the table, Montenegro achieved its best result since its independence, finishing thirteenth.
For the first time, the top four of the contest all scored 200 points or better. Russia's entry "A Million Voices" became the first non-winning Eurovision song to score over 300 points. Austria and Germany became the first countries since 2003 to score no points in the final, with Austria also becoming the first (and to date, only) host country to fail to score a point.
The EBU reported that over 197 million viewers watched the contest, beating the 2014 viewing figures by 2 million.
Location.
Venue.
The event took place in Vienna, Austria, with the venue being the Wiener Stadthalle (specifically the main hall - Hall D) after Austria won the right to host this edition of the Eurovision Song Contest after winning the 2014 edition with the song "Rise Like a Phoenix", performed by Conchita Wurst. The Wiener Stadthalle hosts the annual Erste Bank Open tennis tournament, along with many concerts and events throughout the year. The main hall (Hall D) has a capacity of approximately 16,000 attendees.
Bidding phase.
After Austria's victory in the 2014 contest, their delegation revealed the possibility of hosting the contest either in the capital city, Vienna, or in Salzburg. Vienna, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, Lower Austria, Graz, Upper Austria, Burgenland, and Vorarlberg were all reportedly interested in hosting the contest; Salzburg pulled out of the bidding phase as the city was not able to meet the cost of the venue and promotion.
Vienna, considered the front-runner, had two venues in the phase: Wiener Stadthalle and the trade fair centre, Messe Wien, with capacities of up to 16,000 and 30,000 attendees respectively. Also in the race were Stadthalle Graz and Schwarzl Freizeit Zentrum, both located in the second largest city of Austria, Graz. With a maximum capacity of 30,000, the Wörthersee Stadium in Klagenfurt also joined the race; however, it would require the construction of a roof for the contest to be hosted there. Innsbruck also joined the race with Olympiahalle, which hosted ice hockey and figure skating at the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. A fifth city, Linz, joined the race with Brucknerhaus, although the venue would not be big enough for the contest. Being geographically close to Linz, Wels showed desire to host the event as well. Oberwart, with the Exhibition hall, and Vorarlberg, with the Vorarlberger Landestheater, were the latest cities to declare an interest.
On 29 May 2014, Austrian host public broadcaster ORF and the EBU released some requirements and details about the venue. ORF requested interested parties to respond by 13 June 2014. 
After the deadline on 13 June 2014, ORF announced 12 venues interested in hosting the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: ORF announced on 21 June 2014 that 3 cities (Vienna, Innsbruck, and Graz) had been short-listed in the final stage of the bidding process. On 6 August 2014, ORF announced the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna as the host venue. The contest was provisionally set to take place on 12, 14 and 16 May 2015, but the dates were later pushed back a week in order to accommodate the candidate cities.
Key
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Inclusive traffic lights in Vienna.
The city of Vienna introduced temporary new traffic signals for pedestrians on some streets, featuring same-sex couples holding hands or hugging. They were introduced as part of events connected to the theme of tolerance and inclusion in the lead-up to the Eurovision Song Contest.
Traffic lights of the same – copyrighted – design of the kind "Ampelpärchen" (couples for traffic lights) followed before Christopher Street Days in June 2015 in Salzburg and Linz. In Salzburg the initiative SoHo and social democrate mayor Schaden promoted the change of the shape of the LED-lamps. The faceplates in Linz has been financed by sponsors driven by a Facebook-based initiative, but have been removed – without consent – by the new traffic minister of Linz of the party FPÖ in early December 2015.
Participating countries.
Eligibility for potential participation in the Eurovision Song Contest requires a national broadcaster with active EBU membership capable of receiving the contest via the Eurovision network and broadcasting it live nationwide. The EBU issued an invitation to participate in the contest to all active members.
On 23 December 2014, thirty-nine countries were initially announced to be participating in the 2015 contest. Cyprus and Serbia returned after one-year absences, the Czech Republic returned after a five-year absence, while Ukraine did not enter. Australia was later announced to be making its debut as a guest participant. The deadline to apply for participation was 15 September 2014. Countries that applied had until 10 October 2014 to withdraw from participation without financial consequences.
Invitation of Australia.
On 10 February 2015, the EBU announced that in honour of the 60th anniversary of Eurovision, it had invited Australia to participate in the final of the contest, represented by Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). SBS had been a long-time broadcaster of the event, which has had a large following in Australia. The Australian entry was placed directly in the grand final. Although it was considered a one-off event, if Australia were to win, SBS would have co-hosted the 2016 contest in a European host city of its choice. The EBU considered the possibility of similarly inviting countries to participate in future editions of the contest. Australia's participation brought the number of the finalists up to 27, the highest number of entries in a final in the contest's history.
Returning artists.
Inga Arshakyan, who was part of Genealogy in 2015, represented Armenia in 2009, collaborating with her sister as part of Inga and Anush. Michele Perniola and Anita Simoncini both previously represented San Marino at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest: Perniola took part in 2013, and Simoncini took part in 2014. Amber, who represented Malta, was a backing vocalist for the Maltese entry in 2012. Uzari, who represented Belarus, was a backing vocalist for the Belarusian entry in 2011. Elnur Hüseynov, who was Azerbaijan's debut representative at the Eurovision Song Contest 2008, as part of the duo Elnur and Samir, was internally selected to represent the nation for a second time. Raay, who is a part of the Slovene duo Maraaya, was a backing musical performer for the 2014 entry of Slovenia. Hera Björk, who previously represented Iceland in 2010, returned as a backing singer for Iceland's entry. Nicolas Dorian, part of Witloof Bay, Belgium representatives in 2011, was part of the backing vocalists of Loic Nottet.
Other countries.
Active EBU members.
BHRT and BNT, the broadcasters for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bulgaria, had both submitted a preliminary applications to participate in the 2015 contest, but ultimately withdrew them because of financial reasons. Ukrainian broadcaster NTU also opted out of the contest because of financial reasons and the ongoing armed conflict in the country.
Active EBU member broadcasters in Andorra, Croatia, Lebanon, Luxembourg (despite failed attempts by San Marino and Thierry Mersch to raise funds for a collaboration), Monaco, Morocco and Slovakia confirmed non-participation prior to the announcement of the participants list by the EBU. Despite tweets by Eurovision event supervisor Sietse Bakker about the possibility of the Turkey's return in 2015, Turkish broadcaster TRT later confirmed that they had no plans in this regard.
Format.
The competition consisted of two semi-finals and a final, a format which has been in use since 2008. The ten countries with the highest scores in each semi-final qualified to the final where they joined the host nation Austria, the five main sponsoring nations (known as the "Big Five"): France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, and Australia which was invited this year to commemorate the contest's 60th anniversary. Each participating country had their own national jury, which consisted of five professional members of the music industry. Each member of a respective nation's jury was required to rank every song, except that of their own country. The voting results from each member of a particular nation's jury were combined to produce an overall ranking from first to last place. Likewise, the televoting results were also interpreted as a full ranking, taking into account the full televoting result rather than just the top ten. The combination of the juries' full ranking and the televote's full ranking produced an overall ranking of all competing entries. The song which scored the highest overall rank received 12 points, while the tenth-best ranked song received one point. In the event of a televoting failure (insufficient number of votes or technical issues) or jury failure (technical issue or breach of rules), only one of the methods was used by each country.
The 2015 contest was the last time that the scoring system introduced in 1975 was used, before the format was modified the following year.
Organising team formation.
During an initial meeting between the host broadcaster ORF and the EBU in late May 2014, the representatives of the core organising team were selected. Edgar Böhm, who is the Head of Entertainment at ORF, was announced as the executive producer.
Graphic design.
On 31 July 2014, the EBU released a new and revamped version of the generic logo as a celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest's 60th anniversary. On 11 September, the slogan for the 2015 contest was revealed to be "Building Bridges". The graphic design of the contest was revealed by the EBU on 25 November. The theme art depicts a wave made up of spheres which symbolise diversity, the bridging of connections and people's experiences.
The postcards of this year's contest was also based on the slogan "Building Bridges". Each postcard starts with a drive-by scene of the contestants' capital city, before showing every contestant receiving an invitation to Austria, where the contestants take part in a local activity. The postcards end with a picture of their activity plastered onto a billboard, placed in different locations across Vienna.
For this year's contest, all hashtags for the participating countries incorporated IOC country codes which were displayed onscreen alongside the main country names.
Presenters.
Mirjam Weichselbraun, Alice Tumler and Arabella Kiesbauer were the hosts of the 2015 contest; the all-female trio was the first in history to host the contest. The previous edition's winner Conchita Wurst was chosen as green room host.
Semi-final allocation draw.
The draw that determined the semi-final allocation was held on 26 January 2015 at the Vienna Rathaus and hosted by Andi Knoll and Kati Bellowitsch. The participating countries, excluding the automatic finalists (host country Austria, the "Big Five" and Australia), were split into five pots, based on voting patterns from the previous ten years. The pots were calculated by the televoting partner Digame and were as follows:
Opening and interval acts.
The EBU ident's accompanying "Te Deum", which opened the broadcasts, was performed by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra from the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace for the final. The overture featured violinist Lidia Baich, winner of the Eurovision Young Musicians 1998, who performed live on stage an excerpt of Austria's 1966 winning song "Merci, Chérie" in tribute to Udo Jürgens. The ESC Vienna All-Stars, consisting