title image: eurovision.tv, Sarah Louise Bennett

Switzerland is the winner of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest! “The Code” by Nemo took victory in last night’s grand final, with a huge lead in the jury vote proving insurmountable even as the televoters placed the song fifth. The Malmö stage was plus-shaped like the Swiss flag, so maybe the signs were there all along! Nemo duly takes their place in the ranks of Swiss Eurovision winners alongside Lys Assia and Céline Dion – now that’s a supergroup we’d like to see.

Televoting winner “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” by Baby Lasagna came second overall, giving Croatia its best result as an independent nation. The podium was completed by Ukraine, with Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona proving that the “deadly” second place in the running order doesn’t have to be that much of a handicap after all.

The full results looked like this:

The huge televote scores for both Ukraine and Israel served to underline an uncomfortable truth of the modern competition, namely that televoting in its current form was not designed for a continent in high conflict. While the current 50/50 system just about still works, with imperfect juries balancing out an imperfect televote to (usually) deliver a satisfactory compromise winner, it’s increasingly evident that the public vote can be harnessed for reasons that are not always musical. That having been said, the Ukrainian and Israeli performances were objectively among the most effective of the night, and televoters can’t be expected to fill out a survey on their voting motivations before they’re allowed to vote, so here we are.

Between that and the contentious late disqualification of Dutch entrant Joost Klein, even the best distraction tactics of Lynda Woodruff can’t hide the fact that it’s been a more than turbulent on-season for the EBU, and the boos that greeted every appearance by Martin Österdahl suggest that those in charge need to consider their next steps very carefully.

image credit: eurovision.tv, Sarah Louise Bennett

Elsewhere, Ireland made a long overdue return to the “capable of actually doing well at ESC” family. Bambie Thug’s spectacular staging was always destined to go down nicely with televoters (hence all three of the escgo! team predicting it to qualify), but the jury love that was showered on them last night was a pleasant surprise. 6th place for “Doomsday Blue” represents the Emerald Isle’s best result in the contest since “Millennium of Love” in 2000. Someone needs to make a mashup of those two songs, please.

Ladaniva returned Armenia to the top ten for the first time since 2016, Luxembourg racked up a highly respectable 13th place (though a predictable 24 points to Tali from Israel certainly didn’t hurt) – and a special mention for Germany, where Isaak’s play for jury votes paid off and resulted in a finish on the left-hand side of the scoreboard. A much needed confidence boost after several years of propping up the table!

Speaking of which, our ChatVote winner, Norway, had considerably less in the way of good fortune last night, with Gåte becoming the latest in a long line of Norwegian last-placers – although, of course, they had to finish ahead of six other countries to qualify for the grand final in the first place.

It’s at the right end of the table that we finish, anyway. 24-year-old Nemo is Switzerland’s new national hero, and as Eurovision fans everywhere consider how on earth they’re going to afford two weeks in Zurich, Geneva, Winterthur or Lugano, this article naturally has to finish with a video of the winning song. While their post-victory reprise was especially charming – they didn’t just break the code, they broke the trophy too! – Nemo’s acrobatic original performance of “The Code” is what helped them to victory, so here it is one more time. Huge congratulations to them and to Switzerland, winners of ESC 2024!