International song competition
The Eurovision Song Contest 2012 was the 57th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, following the country's victory at the 2011 contest with the song "Running Scared" by Ell and Nikki. It was the first time Azerbaijan hosted the contest – only four years after the country made its debut. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster İctimai Television (İTV), the contest was held at the Baku Crystal Hall, and consisted of two semi-finals on 22 and 24 May, and a final on 26 May 2012. The three live shows were presented by Azerbaijani television presenter Leyla Aliyeva, newsreader Nargiz Birk-Petersen and singer Eldar Gasimov, the latter of whom was one of the previous edition's winners.
Forty-two countries participated in the contest. Montenegro returned to the contest for the first time since 2009. Meanwhile, Armenia withdrew due to security concerns in relation to the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan. Poland also did not participate due to financial concerns.
The winner was Sweden with the song "Euphoria", performed by Loreen and written by and Peter Boström. The song won both the jury vote and televote and received 372 points out of a maximum of 492. Russia, Serbia, Azerbaijan and Albania rounded out the top five, with Albania achieving their best result to date. Out of the "Big Five" countries, Germany, Italy and Spain all managed to rank within the top 10, finishing eighth, ninth and tenth, respectively.
The lead-up to the contest was met with political concerns and protests surrounding the host country, including its human rights record and allegations by advocacy groups that Baku was carrying out forced evictions in the construction of the contest's venue.
Location.
Azerbaijan got the right to host the 2012 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest after winning the previous 2011 edition with the song "Running Scared" performed by Ell and Nikki. Baku, the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region, was named the host city for the contest, with the venue being the Baku Crystal Hall, built a few months prior to the contest on the city's coastline.
Shortly after Azerbaijan's victory at the 2011 edition, officials announced that a new 23,000-seat concert venue was to be built near National Flag Square in Baku, as a potential venue for the event. Three days later, other venue options were revealed by organisers, such as the 37,000-seat Tofiq Bahramov Stadium and the Heydar Aliyev Sports and Exhibition Complex. On 2 August 2011, Alpine Bau Deutschland AG was awarded the contract to construct the Baku Crystal Hall. Preparations for construction began in the area shortly after the announcement. Even though the full cost of the contract was not named, the government allocated 6 million AZN for the construction of the venue.
On 8 September 2011, Azad Azerbaijan TV (ATV) reported that Baku Crystal Hall would be the venue of the contest, but no formal confirmation was made at the time by the EBU. On 31 October 2011, Ismayil Omarov, the director general of Azerbaijani national broadcaster İctimai Television announced that a decision on the venue choice would be taken by the steering committee in January 2012. On 25 January 2012, it was confirmed that the Baku Crystal Hall would be the venue of the contest. Even though the venue had an extended capacity of 23,000 people, only 16,000 people were able to attend each show. Tickets for the contest became available online for purchase on 28 February 2012.
Participating countries.
On 17 January 2012, the EBU initially announced that forty-three countries would take part in the 2012 contest. The 57th edition saw the return of Montenegro, who was last represented by Andrea Demirović in 2009. Poland decided not to participate, due to the financial burden of the UEFA Euro 2012 (which Poland co-hosted with Ukraine) and the 2012 Summer Olympics. Armenia, who had originally planned to participate, later withdrew their application due to security concerns related to the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan, subsequently reducing the number of participating countries to 42.
Returning artists.
Four artists returned in this year's contest. Kaliopi for Macedonia who previously participated in the 1996 contest with the song "Samo ti", which placed in 26th position in the pre-qualifying round. Kaliopi would then go on to represent Macedonia once more at the Eurovision Song Contest 2016.
Jónsi for Iceland and Željko Joksimović for Serbia both previously participated in 2004.
Joksimović had represented Serbia and Montenegro in 2004 with the song "Lane moje" which placed second in that year, and co-hosted the 2008 contest with Jovana Janković. 
Jónsi performed "Heaven" in 2004, which placed 19th.
For a second consecutive year Jedward participated for Ireland, after their 8th-place finish at the 2011 contest with the song "Lipstick".
Martina Majerle, who represented Slovenia in 2009, returned as a backing vocalist for Slovenia.
Lys Assia, the winner of the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956, had entered her song "C'était ma vie" written by Ralph Siegel and Jean Paul Cara into the Swiss national selection for the 2012 contest. The song, however, only came eighth in a closely fought national selection. Assia attended the event in Baku as a guest of honour.
Languages.
The Finnish entry, "När jag blundar", sung by Pernilla Karlsson, was only Finland's second entry in Swedish (after "Fri?" by Beat in 1990) and the first entry at all to be sung in Swedish since 1998. Russia's entry, "Party for Everybody", sung by Buranovskiye Babushki, was the first entry ever to be performed in Udmurt. The Georgian entry, "I'm a Joker" was the first Eurovision entry containing the Georgian language while the Bulgarian song "Love Unlimited" had a few words in the Azerbaijani language, both of whom never appeared at the contest before.
Other countries.
Active EBU members.
Active EBU member broadcasters in Andorra, Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Poland confirmed non-participation prior to the announcement of the participants list by the EBU. The Monegasque and Moroccan broadcasters did the same, despite previous speculations of a possible return.
Non-EBU member.
On 26 November 2011, it was reported that two official EBU documents showed that Liechtenstein's only national broadcaster 1 FL TV was being granted active EBU membership, sparking speculations of a debut for the nation. However, it was clarified a few days later that these documents contained editing mistakes.
Format.
In a meeting of the Eurovision Reference Group on 29 June 2011, it was decided that the televoting system would revert the format used most recently in the 2009 contest, in which the phone and SMS lines opened for a fifteen-minute window after all songs had been performed, instead of opening before the show starts, which was the system used between 2010 and 2011. The results format of each show remained the same with each country's votes being decided on a 50:50 split between televoting and a national jury. Each participating country had their own national jury, which consisted of five professional members of the music industry.
Under the official rules released on 24 November 2011, the number of participants in the grand final was raised to 26, including the host nation, the "Big Five", and the ten qualifiers from each semi-final. This was the second time in the Eurovision Song Contest that 26 countries were in the grand final, the first being the 2003 contest.
Semi-final allocation draw.
The draw that determined the semi-final running order was held on 25 January 2012 at the Buta Palace. The participating countries, excluding the automatic finalists (Azerbaijan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), were split into six pots, based upon how those countries voted in past contests. From these pots, half (or as close to half as possible) competed in the first semi-final on 22 May 2012. The other half in that particular pot competed in the second semi-final on 24 May 2012. This draw also acted as an approximate running order, in order for the delegations from the countries to know when their rehearsals would commence and determine which semi-final the automatic finalists would be allowed to vote in.
Graphic design.
The design of the contest was built around the motto "Light Your Fire!", inspired by the nickname of Azerbaijan itself, "Land of Fire".
Each introductory video postcard began with a shot of the artist and performers, followed with the flag and country name in a handwritten font with a background resembling the yellow, orange and red fire of the 2012 theme art. The postcards consisted of various shots of Azerbaijan, with a caption displaying 'Azerbaijan' and underneath 'Land of ...' (e.g. Land of Abundance; Land of Poetry etc.), which were then followed by the name of a town or geographic feature, showing the landscape and culture of the country. Some postcards focused on the host city of Baku with text changing to 'Baku' and underneath 'City of ...' (e.g. City of Jazz; City of Leisure etc.). The postcards finished with a shot of the Crystal Hall displayed in the colours of the performing country's flag. These postcards acted as a tourism mechanism to present the country to a wider audience.
The artist, song and number graphics as well as tables and voting graphics were kept the same as those used in 2011, with a slight modification to incorporate the 2012 theme art. The lower points (1-7) were highlighted in red squares while the top points (8, 10, 12) were highlighted in orange squares with each square increasing in size in relation to the point value. Both sets of graphics were designed by London brand design agency Turquoise Branding.
National host broadcaster.
İctimai Television (İTV), which was the EBU member that broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan, is one of country's public-service broadcasters. Deputy Minister of Communication and Information Technology of Azerbaijan, Iltimas Mammadov, stated that telecom networks were ready to host the event. Azerbaijan's largest telecommunications operator, Azercell, was chosen as the presenting partner for the contest. On 1 December 2011, İTV named the German production company Brainpool as its official production partner for the contest, citing the quality of its work on the previous year's contest.
Contest overview.
Semi-final 1.
Azerbaijan, Italy and Spain voted in the first semi-final. The EBU allowed the Albanian broadcaster Radio Televizioni Shqiptar (RTSH) to defer transmission and only use jury votes due to the Qafa e Vishës bus accident.
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Semi-final 2.
France, Germany and the United Kingdom voted in the second semi-final. Germany requested that they vote in this semi-final. Before it withdrew, Armenia was drawn to perform in the first half of this semi-final.
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Final.
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Spokespersons.
The order in which each country announced their vote was determined in a draw following the jury results from the final dress rehearsal. Similar to the 2011 contest an algorithm was used to add as much excitement as possible. The spokespersons are shown alongside each country.
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Detailed voting results.
The EBU and PwC audit company checked and verified the individual jury and televoting results, which were combined to create the overall national vote for the contests. On 18 June 2012, the EBU published the following results.
Semi-final 1.
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12 points.
Below is a summary of the maximum 12 points each country awarded to another in the first semi-final:
Semi-final 2.
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12 points.
Below is a summary of the maximum 12 points each country awarded to another in the second semi-final:
Final.
 ;templatestyles src="Legend/styles.css" / ;  Winner
12 points.
Below is a summary of the maximum 12 points each country awarded to another in the grand final:
Broadcasts.
Most countries sent commentators to Baku or commentated from their own country, in order to add insight to the participants and, if necessary, the provision of voting information. In addition to the participating countries, the hosts mentioned that the contest was also broadcast in Australia and New Zealand. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. 
Incidents.
Human rights concerns.
Azerbaijan's large investment in hosting the Eurovision contest was widely discussed in Western media as an attempt to "mitigate misgivings about its poor democracy and human rights record". Elnur Majidli, an activist imprisoned during the Arab Spring-inspired 2011 Azerbaijani protests, was released in an apparent effort to soften Azerbaijan's image ahead of the contest, but many political prisoners remained. Human Rights Watch reported a "violent crackdown on protesters" on the eve of the contest, and