What is the ideal date to select a Eurovision winning song?

Photo credits: EBU

Each year, Eurovision fans eagerly await the full line-up of participating songs for the Contest.

From internal selections and national finals, these are usually chosen between December and mid-March each year.

But when is the ideal time to make your selection?

Early in the season to build familiarity or later on to make a splash closer to the date and also check out your competition.

Well, without analysing every song and their result, we've focused in on the most recent 20 Eurovision winners to see when they were selected or released.

Approach

To make things easier we are primarily using dates that the song was released to the public or chosen as a winner of a national selection.

That does mean some songs are out earlier before they win their national final.

What did we find?

80% of all winners were released or chosen in March.

15% of all winners were released in February (but all after 21st February)

And just one song was selected in January ('Only Teardrops' from 2013 for Denmark).

This points towards releasing or selecting your song later in the season for its best chance to win Eurovision.

However, 5 of the 16 winners chosen in March had been performed earlier in a national final heat or semi-final.

So, potentially releasing a song earlier isn't a complete killer of your winning chances.

What is the perfect date?

If we average out all the dates that the 20 winners were chosen from, the ideal date to be selected is:

6 March

This just so happens to be the date that Australia is announcing its entry this year!

In fact, half the winner entries have been revealed in the week of March 5 to March 12.

Australia's top-performing song, 'Sound of Silence,' was revealed on March 11

The dates songs were released or selected

January

• 'Only Teardrops' - 26 January

February

• '1944' - 21 February

• 'Fairytale' - 21 February

• 'Stefania' - 22 February

March

• 'My Number One' - 2 March

• 'Amar pelos dois' - 5 March

• 'Zitti e buoni' - 6 March

• 'Arcade' - 7 March

• 'Molitva' - 8 March

• 'Everyway That I Can' - 8 March

• 'Believe' - 9 March

• 'Euphoria' - 10 March

• 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' - 10 March

• 'Tattoo' - 11 March

• 'Toy' - 11 March

• 'Satellite' - 12 March

• 'Heroes' - 14 March

• 'Running Scared' - 14 March

• 'Rise Like a Phoenix' - 18 March

• 'Wild Dances' - 25 March

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