Episode 276: Lingua Franca

The Grand Final of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest featured 21 songs with non-English lyrics, the most to appear since the language rule was abolished in 1999. In this episode, we'll explore the history of the language rule and why language diversity has returned to the Contest. Lingua Franca Summary The introduction of the Language Rule at Eurovision (4:17) The End of the Language Rule (17:17) What may be contributing to language diversity at Eurovision? (27:29) Subscribe The EuroWhat? Podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Find your podcast app to subscribe here (https://www.eurowhat.com/subscribe). Comments, questions, and episode topic suggestions are always welcome. You can shoot us an email (mailto:[e-mail]) or reach out on Bluesky @eurowhat.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/eurowhat.bsky.social). Join the EuroWhat AV Club! If you would like to help financially support the show, we are hosting the EuroWhat AV Club over on Patreon! We have a slew of bonus episodes with deep dives on Eurovision-adjacent topics. Eurovision Podcast Podcrawl What is the Eurovision Podcrawl? It's where the Eurovision podcast community picks a topic ("a year when a country first hosted Eurovision") and we all publish our episodes in our own styles. At the end of an episode, we'll point to the podcast with the next episode, and so on, through the summer! Here's the crawl: ESC Insight: France 1959 (https://escinsight.com/2025/06/18/eurovision-insight-podcast-the-eurovision-podcrawl-starts-in-cannes-1959/) Wind Machine Podcast: Austria 1967 (https://windmachinepodcast.com/2025/06/30/episode-103-1967-podcrawl-oh-vienna-and-the-barefooted-mistress-of-puppets/) The EuroWhat? Podcast: Yugoslavia 1990 (https://www.eurowhat.com/274) Niall Points: Latvia 2003 (https://niallpoints.com/2025/07/eurovision-podcrawl-riga-2003-dont-cry-gemini-lets-be-gay/) 12 Points from America: Belgium 1987 (https://12pointsfromamerica.com/2025/08/episode-264-eurovision-pod-crawl-a-look-at-eurovision-1987/) That Eurovision Site: Denmark 1964 (week of August 25) Douze Points: Azerbaijan 2012 (week of September 8)