Introduction

The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is a unique visual phenomenon. Commonly associated with spectacle stagings, performance design at the ESC is, in reality, far more nuanced, balancing national identity-building with host country branding, visual tourism, cross-cultural aesthetics, and significant technical innovation. This is the first volume to put ESC design front and centre, discussing the critical and practical aspects of creating performance scenography for this international stage. This introduction first outlines the history of ESC scholarship and its relationship to design. It then turns to scenography, providing some initial definitions and ideas from the field to contextualize this way of thinking about performance and space. Today's large-scale, arena-based ESC offers significant scenographic potential for entries and host broadcasters, while presenting significant logistical and inter-cultural challenges. The introduction thus considers what makes the ESC a unique scenographic context and reviews questions of scenography and national identity at the ESC plus the ESC's materiality as a media event. It concludes with an overview of the chapter structure.