Eurovision Song Contest 1993
The Eurovision Song Contest 1993 was the 38th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, held on 15 May 1993 at the Green Glens Arena in Millstreet, Ireland, and presented by Fionnuala Sweeney. It was organised by the European Broadcasting Union and host broadcaster RTÉ, who staged the event after winning the for with the song "Why Me?" performed by Linda Martin.
Broadcasters from twenty-five countries participated in the contest, the largest yet held. Twenty-two of the twenty-three countries that had participated in the previous year's event returned, with prevented from competing following the closure of its national broadcaster and the placement of sanctions against the country in response to the Yugoslav Wars. In response to an increased interest in participation of broadcasters from the former Eastern Bloc countries following the collapse of communist regimes, three spaces in the event were allocated to first-time participants, which would be determined through a qualifying competition. Held in April 1993 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Kvalifikacija za Millstreet featured entries from seven countries and resulted in the entries from the former Yugoslav republics of,, and progressing to the contest in Millstreet.
For the second year in a row, the winner was with the song "In Your Eyes", written by Jimmy Walsh and performed by Niamh Kavanagh. The,,, and completed the top five, with the United Kingdom achieving its second consecutive runner-up placing. Ireland achieved its fifth victory in the contest, matching the overall record held by and, and joined, Luxembourg and as countries with wins in successive contests.
Location
The 1993 contest took place in Millstreet, Ireland, following the country's victory at the with the song "Why Me?", performed by Linda Martin. It was the fourth time that Ireland had hosted the contest, having previously staged the event in,, and, with all previous events held in the country's capital city Dublin.The Green Glens Arena, an indoor arena used primarily for equestrian events, was chosen as the contest venue, with its owner Noel C Duggan offering the use of the venue for free, as well as pledging a further from local businesses for the staging of the event. Individuals within RTÉ, including the organisation's Director-General Joe Barry, were interested in staging the event outside of Dublin for the first time, and alongside Dublin RTÉ production teams scouted locations in rural Ireland in the months following Ireland's win. Although the contest had previously been held in smaller towns, such as Harrogate, an English town of 70,000 people which staged the, with a population of 1,500, Millstreet became the smallest settlement to stage the event at that time and continues to hold the record as of 2025. The arena would have an audience of around 3,500 during the contest. The choice of Millstreet and the Green Glens Arena to stage the contest was met with some ridicule, with BBC journalist Nicholas Witchell referring to the venue as a "cowshed", however Millstreet had won out over more conventional locations, including Dublin and Galway, due to the facilities available in the Green Glens Arena and the town's local community which were hugely enthusiastic about the event being staged in their area.
Due to the small size of Millstreet, delegations were primarily based in surrounding settlements, including Killarney and other towns in counties Cork and Kerry. Alongside Millstreet itself, Killarney and Cork City held receptions for the competing delegates during the week of the contest, at the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney and Cork's City Hall, the latter hosted by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.
Participants
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Eurovision Song Contest regularly featured over twenty participants in each edition, and by 1992 an increasing number of broadcasters had begun expressing an interest in joining the event for the first time. This came as a result of revolutions leading to the fall of communist regimes in Europe and the formation of new countries due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. With the admission into the European Broadcasting Union of the broadcasters of the countries that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the merger of the EBU with its Eastern European counterpart, the International Radio and Television Organisation, the number of broadcasters eligible to participate in the contest increased significantly. In an effort to incorporate these new countries into the contest, the EBU raised the maximum number of participants to twenty-fivethe highest number yet seen in the contestcreating space for three new countries to participate alongside twenty-two of the twenty-three countries that had participated in the. which had participated in the contest since was unable to participate as its EBU member broadcaster Yugoslav Radio Television was disbanded in 1992 and its successor organisations Radio Television of Serbia and Radio and Television of Montenegro were barred from joining the EBU due to sanctions against the country as part of the Yugoslav Wars.As a temporary solution for the 1993 contest, a qualifying round was organised to determine the three countries which participate in the final for the first time. Subsequently, for the, a relegation system was introduced which would bar the lowest-scoring countries from participating in the following year's event. At the running order draw, held in December 1992 at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and hosted by Pat Kenny and Linda Martin, the three new countries were represented as Countries A, B, and C, corresponding with the countries that would place first, second and third in the qualifying competition respectively. Entitled Kvalifikacija za Millstreet, the qualifying round took place on 3 April 1993 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Initially broadcasters in as many as fourteen countries registered an interest in competing in the event, however only seven of them eventually submitted entries, representing,,,,,, and. Ultimately the entries from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia were chosen to progress to the contest proper in Millstreet; as constituent republics of SFR Yugoslavia, representatives from all three countries had previously competed in the contest.
A number of artists who had previously participated in the contest were featured among the performers at this event for the same country, either as the main performing artist or as backing performers: Tony Wegas had represented, and among his backing performers was Gary Lux, who had previously represented Austria in the contest on three occasions, as a member of the group Westend in and as a solo artist in and ; Katri Helena had previously competed for ; Tommy Seebach, representing Denmark as part of the Seebach Band, had represented as a solo artist and alongside Debbie Cameron; and Humphrey Campbell, who had represented the, returned as a backing singer for the Dutch entrant Ruth Jacott.
| Country | Broadcaster | Artist | Song | Language | Songwriter | Conductor |
| ORF | Tony Wegas | "Maria Magdalena" | German | Christian Kolonovits | ||
| BRTN | Barbara | "Iemand als jij" | Dutch | Bert Candries | ||
| RTVBiH | "Sva bol svijeta" | Bosnian | Noel Kelehan | |||
| HRT | Put | "Don't Ever Cry" | Croatian, English | Andrej Baša | ||
| CyBC | and | "Mi stamatas" | Greek | George Theofanous | ||
| DR | Seebach Band | "Under stjernerne på himlen" | Danish | George Keller | ||
| YLE | Katri Helena | "Tule luo" | Finnish | Olli Ahvenlahti | ||
| France Télévision | Patrick Fiori | "Mama Corsica" | French, Corsican | François Valéry | Christian Cravero | |
| MDR | Münchener Freiheit | "Viel zu weit" | German | Norbert Daum | ||
| ERT | Katerina Garbi | "Ellada, hora tou fotos" | Greek | Dimosthenis Stringlis | Haris Andreadis | |
| RÚV | "Þá veistu svarið" | Icelandic | Jon Kjell Seljeseth | |||
| RTÉ | Niamh Kavanagh | "In Your Eyes" | English | Jimmy Walsh | Noel Kelehan | |
| IBA | "Shiru" | Hebrew, English | Amir Frohlich | |||
| RAI | Enrico Ruggeri | "Sole d'Europa" | Italian | Enrico Ruggeri | Vittorio Cosma | |
| CLT | "Donne-moi une chance" | French, Luxembourgish | Francis Goya | |||
| PBS | "This Time" | English | William Mangion | |||
| NOS | Ruth Jacott | "Vrede" | Dutch | Harry van Hoof | ||
| NRK | "Alle mine tankar" | Norwegian | Rolf Løvland | |||
| RTP | Anabela | "A cidade até ser dia" | Portuguese | Armindo Neves | ||
| RTVSLO | "Tih deževen dan" | Slovene | Jože Privšek | |||
| TVE | Eva Santamaría | "Hombres" | Spanish | Carlos Toro | Eduardo Leiva | |
| SVT | Arvingarna | "Eloise" | Swedish | Curt-Eric Holmquist | ||
| SRG SSR | "Moi, tout simplement" | French | Marc Sorrentino | |||
| TRT | , Öztürk Baybora and Serter | "Esmer Yarim" | Turkish | Burak Aydos | ||
| BBC | Sonia | "Better the Devil You Know" | English | Nigel Wright |
| Country | Broadcaster | Artist | Song | Language | Songwriter |
| ETV | Janika Sillamaa | "Muretut meelt ja südametuld" | Estonian | ||
| MTV | "Árva reggel" | Hungarian | |||
| TVR | "Nu pleca" | Romanian | |||
| STV | Elán | "Amnestia na neveru" | Slovak |