Austria has come out on top for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with 436 votes for singer-songwriter JJ, who beat Israel’s Yuval Raphael.
This makes the country’s third win following previous victories in 1966 and 2014 – this makes Austria the country with the longest gap between years at 48.
The 24-year-old JJ – real name Johannes Pietsch – won Eurovision 2025 with ‘Wasted Love’, a stirring pop song with elements of classical opera. The awards ceremony was held in Basel, Switzerland.
Pietsch kept his thank-you speech short, telling the crowd: “Love is the strongest force in the world. Let’s spread more love.” He followed it up with a rousing encore performance of ‘Wasted Love’.
JJ beat out Raphael, whose performance of ‘New Day Will Rise’ got a significant push in votes from the public after just garnering 60 votes from the various European juries. They finished in second place with 357 votes in total. Watch JJ’s performance of ‘Wasted Love’ below.
Earlier this week, NME reported the bookers’ odds of Eurovision 2025 winners, with Austria’s JJ at 21 per cent in second place. Sweden’s KAJ were the bookers’ favourites, although the final results placed them at fourth place with 321 points.
See the full list of winners below.
There was controversy surrounding this year’s event after over 70 former Eurovision contestants signed a letter calling to ban Israel. The letter said that the inclusion of Israel in the 2024 edition led to it being “the most politicised, chaotic and unpleasant in the competition’s history”.
It also accused KAN of being “complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the decades-long regime of apartheid and military occupation against the entire Palestinian people”, and claimed that the EBU was “normalising and whitewashing its crimes”.
Irish broadcaster RTÉ also asked Eurovision for a discussion over Israel’s involvement in the song contest.
UK’s Remember Monday, who finished in 19th place, spoke to NME about competing in this year’s song contest in Basel – and revealed that Queen‘s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was a major influence on their “chaotic” power-pop song ‘What the Hell Just Happened?’
Estonia’s Eurovision 2025 entry Tommy Cash, who finished third with 356 points, also recently spoke to NME about the inspirations behind his controversial song ‘Espresso Macchiato’ and his hopes for winning.
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