The Eurovision Song Contest has opened its doors for the first rehearsals in the arena. As usual the delegations of all participating countries have arrived in Malmö to start with the rehearsals on the Eurovision stage.

Everything looks like every year, beside of the point that there will be no access to press centre and arena for the journalists until May 4^th. The production team would like to perfect each entry to the best and they want to avoid that photos and videos will be published in social media which can harm the artists. With the effect that there will be only some short TikTok sequences visible to make it difficult to make any estimations by Eurovision fan sites. Furthermore there will be no press conferences and photo opportunities, which shows that the ESC becomes a more exclusive event, where the access will be more limited every year. This makes the work for all media even more difficult and it’s not the same experience to everybody involved in the ESC.

All the independent fan media made the ESC as popular as it is nowadays and now they are not useful anymore as the event has reached another level of popularity. Let’s hope that the organizers will change their minds for future events, otherwise there will be no support coming from the dedicated fan media.

The typical Eurovision atmosphere will not be the same as it used to be, as there is one week only to follow the full show rehearsals starting on May 6^th when almost everything is concentrated on the live shows.