Whether you’re a regular reader of esc-chat.com, a user of our chatroom or just an occasional visitor, you will have noticed that we’ve been on a break recently, with a limited online presence as we rebuild our website behind the scenes. And now the good news: we’re back!

esc-chat.com is the online home for a long-standing community of Eurovision Song Contest fans. We provide ESC news throughout the year, coverage from the contest every May and a lively chatroom where fans can exchange opinions and have a good time.

Following a successful ESC 2013 at which our on-site coverage from Malmö brought us to new milestones in terms of site hits and followers, we have stayed active while our website has been under construction, keeping people up-to-date on Facebook and Twitter, holding our first Chat Awards in December – and, of course, enjoying all the 2014 national finals together in our chat!

Now we are proud to relaunch our website with a new look and some brand new features that we think really enhance the esc-chat.com experience. For example:

• An improved webchat in both look and functionality – so much so that we now recommend using the webchat over software-based chat (see the FAQ for details).

• The liveblog, which you can see in the sidebar to the right. This permanently updating panel is where you’ll find all the latest headline news as soon as it happens, as well as those fun bits and pieces that don’t need an article in their own right, but that we think the world should know about anyway. We’ll also be using it in connection with live events and other happenings.

• The new calendar, which you can also see on the right-hand side of the News section. Together with the “Today” overview, this puts the information on all the important events right at your fingertips.

• The new Eurovision page, with easy links to our coverage archives from recent ESCs, photo galleries – and an interactive system of star ratings, allowing you to share your opinion on every contest ever!

All of this is accompanied by the relaunch of our popular Chat Charts with some slight changes to the format – see the introductory article for details – and, of course, the usual range of news and previews as we move towards our coverage of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen.

In other words: esc-chat.com has become more modern, more usable, more instant and more compact. It also works on your tablet or smartphone!

We are delighted to welcome you back to your Eurovision channel. Let us know what you think – and enjoy!