A senior Russian Foreign Ministry official claimed on Wednesday that the United States would send a contestant to the revamped Intervision Song Contest, a Cold War-era competition meant to rival the much more influential Eurovision.
The Eurovision Song Contest, celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2026, is the world’s largest live music event. An estimated 160 million people around the world watched the 2025 contest, which featured 37 competitors. Austria won the competition and will host in Vienna next year, organizers announced on Wednesday.
While Eurovision is not strictly limited to European states — Israel, Azerbaijan, and Australia are regular competitors — most Eurovision fans enthusiastically reject the prospect of America competing, often citing the outsized cultural influence the United States has in nearly every other major international event. The United States also does not have an equivalent to the European Broadcast Union (EBU) serviceable for the contest, a public broadcaster to organize its competitor and coordinate with the other states, complicating any potential entry. In 2022, NBC, which possesses broadcast rights to Eurovision in the United States, debuted an “American Song Contest” featuring contestants from every state, but the event did not generate enough enthusiasm to prompt a repeat tournament.
Unlike the original iteration of Intervision, which mostly featured Soviet states and others on the communist side of the Iron Curtain in Europe, the 2025 version of Intervision will feature a host of repressive communist and socialist states from around the world, including China, Cuba, Venezuela, and South Africa. While rumors had surfaced on social media in June that the United States may participate in the contest, the Russian government had not confirmed them until this week.
Moscow is expected to host the Intervision Song Contest on September 20.
The Russian news agency Tass reported on Wednesday that the United States would compete in Intervision, citing Alexander Alimov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Multilateral Humanitarian Cooperation and Cultural Relations. It is not clear at press time who in the United States would be responsible for organizing a search for a singer to compete or who had confirmed participation to the Russian Foreign Ministry on behalf of the country.
Alimov claimed that 21 countries so far had confirmed participation in Intervision. In addition to America and Russia, that list features Belarus, China, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Vietnam.
“Unfortunately, not all countries invited by us are on the list, but I should say that we have not barred anyone from competition for political reasons,” Alimov emphasized — a clear reference to Eurovision banning Russia and Belarus in protest of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022. Intervision’s website also appears to reference, or copy, Eurovision’s content heavily, even featuring a bastardized version of the Eurovision slogan “united by music”: “unity through music.”
The Intervision Song Contest was originally formed as a way for communist nations in Europe to engage in their own version of Eurovision.
“Intervision was staged for the mostly communist party-controlled state broadcasting organisations that were members of the International Radio and Television Organisation, the Eastern Bloc counterpart of the European Broadcasting Union, and its Intervision Network,” Dean Vuletic, a history professor who runs a research project on the history of Eurovision at the University of Vienna, wrote in 2020. While the Soviet Union was influential in the project, Poland and Czechoslovakia organized many editions in the 1960s and 1970s. Poland is among several nations that competed in Intervision and are also staples at the Eurovision Song Contest today, including Austria, Belgium, Finland, Spain, and Switzerland.
The final edition of Soviet-era Intervision occurred in 1980; Finland’s Marion Rung won.
Russia previously attempted to revive Intervision in 2008, but did not continue the event the next year.
With exactly a month to go before the competition, who will be singing for which country remains largely a mystery. No public information is available on the alleged American participant.
The most high-profile contestant appearing on the Intervision website is the Russian competitor, a singer known as Shaman. Shaman will be performing “Straight to the Heart” at the competition.
Several other countries have revealed the names of their artists, but not the songs they will perform — in contrast to Eurovision, which releases lists of artists and music videos for their songs months in advance, allowing candidates to campaign across the continent. Venezuela’s competitor, Omar Acedo, debuted his competing song “La Fiesta de la Paz” (“The Party of Peace”) last week.
Russia’s efforts to subvert the influence of Eurovision have persisted for years before the song contest expelled the country. Russian politicians were especially vocal about exiting Eurovision and replacing it with a Russian-led event in 2014, when drag queen Conchita Wurst took the trophy for Austria with the ballad “Rise Like a Phoenix.”
“We must leave this competition. We cannot tolerate this endless madness,” Communist Party of Russia lawmaker Valery Rashkin said at the time. Russian politicians complained Eurovision had become a “Europe-wide gay parade” and “hotbed of sodomy.”
Eurovision had also become a hotbed of sentiment against the Russian government. The contest debuted what was referred to as “anti-booing technology” in 2015 in particular to protect the Russian contestant from jeers in objection to Russia’s colonization of Crimea, Ukraine, the year prior. Aside from the audience, the Russian government also had to contend with political dissidence from its own contestants. The last singer to represent Russia at Eurovision, Russian-Tajik performer Manizha, performed a feminist song titled “Russian Woman” and warmly engaged with the Ukrainian contestants in 2021 before openly opposing the invasion of Ukraine the next year. Manizha later revealed she had been banned from performing in Russia over her views.
Preceding Manizha at the contest, representing Russia at the canceled 2020 Eurovision song contest, was the band Little Big. Like Manizha, the group vocally opposed the invasion of Ukraine, forcing them into exile.
“We condemn actions of the Russian government, and Russia’s military propaganda is so disgusting for us that we decided to leave everything behind and flee the country,” lead singer Ilya Prusikin said following the invasion.
The group is now based in the United States and is currently touring in America.
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