Ukraine’s EBU Member UA:PBC won the 66th Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Stefania” performed by Kalush Orchestra. This is the third win for Ukraine who last triumphed in 2016, EBU announced. 25 countries took part in the Grand Final of the world’s largest live music event, hosted by Italian EBU Member Rai on Saturday in Turin.

Ivan Klymenko, Oleh Psiuk, Ihor Didenchuk, Tymofii Muzychuk and Vitalii Duzhyk wrote the winning song which finished the night with 631 points, 165 points ahead of second placed United Kingdom represented by Sam Ryder singing “Space Man”. Spain’s Chanel with “SloMo” finished in third place.

Following the performances of the 25 Grand Finalists, the results of the juries in the 40 participating nations who voted on Friday’s dress rehearsal were given out leaving the United Kingdom in the lead.

This was followed by an exciting, tense sequence where viewers’ televotes for each competing country were combined and added to the scoreboard resulting in a thrilling finale that saw Ukraine leap to the top.

An estimated audience of nearly 200 million will have seen this year's Contest which was broadcast live in the 40 participating countries. The event also reached millions on TikTok, the Contest’s Official Entertainment Partner where the 3 live shows were live streamed for the first time and on YouTube.

The 25 finalists performed live in front of an audience of nearly 7.000 people inside the PalaOlimpico.

In total, 40 EBU Members competed in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. 15 nations were knocked out in two Semi-Finals held on May 10 and 12.

Martin Österdahl, the EBU's Executive Supervisor of the ESC, said: "The Eurovision Song Contest is the only cultural event that truly unites Europe. This year it’s been more important than ever to bring millions together through our common values and love of music. The world’s largest live music event is also the most ambitious live TV show in the world and we couldn’t be happier with, and more grateful for, the incredible work Rai has done here in Turin.”

“On a fantastic stage in front of hundreds of millions watching across the world, every artist and songwriter has brought something unique to the Contest and embodied what this competition is about - diversity, universality and uniting Europe on one stage.

“We congratulate Ukraine and Kalush Orchestra on their win and superb performance. Now we will begin planning for 2023 with winning broadcaster UA:PBC. Obviously, there are unique challenges involved in hosting next year’s competition.

However, as in any other year, we look forward to discussing all the requirements and responsibilities involved in hosting the competition with UA:PBC and all other stakeholders to ensure we have the most suitable setup for the 67th Eurovision Song Contest.”

The Saturday Final was marked, however, by a voting scandal. The national juries from six countries in the second semi-final were removed from the contest. These were then replaced by an aggregated result based on countries with similar voting patterns in both the second semi-final and the grand final. The six national juries that were removed from Eurovision 2022 were from the following countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, San Marino.

EBU stated: “In the analysis of jury voting by the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) pan-European voting partner after the Second Dress Rehearsal of the Second Semi-Final of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, certain irregular voting patterns were identified in the results of six countries.

In order to comply with the Contest’s Voting Instructions, the EBU worked with its voting partner to calculate a substitute aggregated result for each country concerned for both the Second-Semi Final and the Grand Final (calculated based on the results of other countries with similar voting records).
This process was acknowledged by the Independent Voting Monitor.

The EBU takes any suspected attempts to manipulate the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest extremely seriously and has the right to remove such votes in accordance with the Official Voting Instructions, irrespective of whether or not such votes are likely to influence the results and/or outcome of the voting.”

Also, representatives of the national juries of Georgia and Azerbaijan at Eurovision stated a mistake — they gave their top 12 points to Ukraine, not the UK.

Thus, during the announcement of points, it was stated that Georgia and Azerbaijan gave Ukraine 6 points each. In the case of Azerbaijan, the score was not announced by a representative of the national jury but by a representative of the European Language Union — "due to technical problems". The Georgian representative also failed to come air for a similar reason.

Italian police also reported that it prevented cyber-attacks by Russian hackers during the voting.