As is traditional at this time of year, we’ve been gathering in the #esc chat these last few nights to watch Festivali i Kengës, with the added bonus of Montesong the next evening. That means we already have two songs for the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest line-up before 2025 even ends – “Nân” by Alis for Albania and “Nova zora” by Tamara Živković for Montenegro.

If we say there are only 33 more entries to be chosen, however, that statement in itself tells a story.

Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Iceland have, of course, withdrawn from ESC 2026, and it’s impossible to engage with the new national final season without also acknowledging the controversy surrounding Israel’s continued participation in light of the genocide in Gaza and the manipulation of the public vote in the last two contests. It casts a shadow over everything, and indeed risks overshadowing everything. In such a polarising environment, many fans find themselves confronting the unpleasant decision of how best to approach the contest in its current form – and, frankly, whether to approach it at all, or instead turn their back on a beloved hobby.

In a way, being the home of a highly old-school medium like an IRC chatroom reflects our own status as “legacy ESC fans”. We watch every year’s national finals with a certain degree of enthusiasm, we collect votes for SongHunt and WTF moments for LolHunt along the way – but even as the calendar flips from 2025 to 2026, are we instinctively more at home rewatching the ESC 1988 scoreboard and mouthing along to every vote from our muscle memory than obsessing about what’s going to win in Moldova this year? Probably, to be honest.

And, oddly, I think that’s what makes the way ahead a little easier for us. If you’ve already fallen out of love with the modern ESC a bit anyway, the current turbulence is a lot less painful than if you’re a younger fan who’s recently developed a passion for the contest only to find its very foundations crumbling from underneath you.

At one level it’s “business as usual” for escgo! this year, then. Our days as a news blog are, realistically, behind us. Instead, we’re the happy home of a long-standing chat community and the established SongHunt and ChatVote events, and we have no plans to change that as things currently stand. Geopolitics and badly handled decisions at the level of the European Broadcasting Union shouldn’t be enough to undo years – decades! – of forging friendships with like-minded people.

But we also want to make sure we’re a safe space for fans who are experiencing all kinds of conflicting emotions and expressing different opinions on the current situation, and I think that’s what our chat offers, too. We’re quite good at nuance and talking things out, and we’re certainly calmer than social media – and that’s no bad thing.

With that in mind, and with respect to everyone for the decisions they’re having to take right now, we look forward to continuing to welcome you in the #esc chat in 2026 as we navigate these turbulent waters together.

Happy FiKmas, everyone.