Eurovision, the glitzy contest where music meets politics, is adding an Asian edition

Dust off the sequins and stock up on the pyrotechnics: The Eurovision Song Contest is coming to Asia.

The organizers of Eurovision, the glitzy singing contest that draws Super Bowl-like viewership every year in Europe and beyond, said Tuesday that they would hold the first-ever Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok on Nov. 14.

Music industry heavyweight South Korea is among the 10 countries that will be competing, alongside Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam and the host country, Thailand. Organizers said more countries are expected to join in the coming months.

The rules of the new competition have yet to be announced. In the Eurovision Song Contest, a broadcaster in each country selects an artist to perform an original song, no longer than three minutes, to perform live onstage. Performers whose careers have taken off after they performed in Eurovision include ABBA, Céline Dion and Olivia Newton-John.

“As we mark the 70th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, it feels especially meaningful to open this next chapter with Asia, a region rich in culture, creativity and talent,” Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, said in a news release announcing the new event.

In recent years, Eurovision has been a hot spot of controversy as geopolitical conflicts overshadow the singing, with Russia being kicked out of the contest after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israel facing calls to be barred from the contest and a boycott over its war in Gaza. Armenia and Azerbaijan both competed in the contest while they were locked in a decadeslong dispute over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

And while regional powers China and Japan are not taking part so far, there is potential for geopolitics to come up in the Asian contest, much as it does in its European counterpart. Thailand and Cambodia have a border dispute in which tensions have flared recently, and several countries have competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The idea for an Asian edition of Eurovision has been floating around since at least 2008, but it has never managed to get off the ground. Organizers said the event could draw a audience of more than 600 million people, more than triple the 166 million who tuned in to the most recent Eurovision, according to viewing figures from the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest. But starting a new television tradition could be challenging at a time when more media is being consumed digitally than ever before.

Last year, Russia attempted a revival of a Soviet alternative to Eurovision, the Intervision Song Contest. It’s not clear how many people watched Vietnam’s Duc Phuc win that contest, but organizers say they will hold a 2026 edition of Intervision in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in September.

Eurovision has tried to expand beyond its core contest before. In 2022, the American Song Contest aired on NBC with all 50 states and several U.S. territories competing, but it was not renewed for the following year. Its winner, AleXa, a K-pop singer from Oklahoma, went on to compete in the selection process to be the Swedish entry at this year’s Eurovision, though she ultimately failed to make the cut.