Eurovision Is Gay Christmas - And Always Has Been

2022

Eurovision fan culture · "N/A" · Multiple · 2000 Language: N/A · Venue: N/A · Host: N/A, N/A · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: streaming era 'Eurovision is gay Christmas' is a tradition older than the phrase itself. Paul Oscar's 1997 openly gay performance, Dana International's 1998 trans win, Conchita 2014, Jamala 2016, Nemo 2024, the contest has been queer audience infrastructure since at least the 1980s. OGAE fan clubs, Eurovision viewing parties in gay bars across Europe, the specific camp aesthetic of 'Eurovision fan', all predate mainstream LGBTQ+ visibility by decades. Eurovision is one of few annual pan-European rituals queer people have owned rather than adapted. Context Eurovision's queer fan culture crystallized in the 1980s with Paul Oscar and Katja Ebstein's predecessors. The OGAE fan-club network was not officially queer but its participant demographic skewed significantly LGBTQ+. Queer Eurovision bars in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid have been annual fixtures since the 1990s. Legacy The Eurovision-queer association has been written into pop-culture commentary so thoroughly that mainstream media now routinely describe the event as 'the gay Super Bowl' or 'gay Christmas'. The 2014 Conchita and 2024 Nemo wins made the queer-fan cultural argument institutional. Few annual European cultural events have maintained such a consistent LGBTQ+ fan infrastructure across seven decades. The subject dates from 2000; this photograph was taken in 2022.