Carmelle Collado has won the first Eurovision song contest Asia, taking the Philippines’ entry, Sobra-Sobra, to victory in Bangkok on Saturday night, at the first regional edition of the contest to be staged outside Europe.
Eleven countries competed at the One Bangkok Forum in central Bangkok, and the show ran for two and a half hours including advertising.
The winner, who performs under the single name Carmelle, finished on ۲۱۱ points, ۴۱ clear of the hosts Thailand, with Vietnam third. She received the most votes from both the national juries and the public ballot.
Carmelle, ۱۹, grew up beside the railway tracks in the Bicol region of south-eastern Luzon and has been competing in televised talent contests since she was ۱۲.
Sobra-Sobra mixes pop and rap, is supported by traditional Philippine instruments, the kubing and kulintang, and is sung in Tagalog and English.
After her victory, Carmelle said her song celebrated female empowerment and was intended as “a tribute to all Filipino women”.
“I made history, since this was the first time,” she told the Associated Press. “It’s such a big responsibility for me, because this one is a global stage, so thank you everybody who voted for me.”
“It’s about how unapologetic, independent and strong Filipinas are,” she told the Guardian before the final. “It describes me – not just me, but of course all the Filipinas.”
The show opened with a routine celebrating the host country, in which Muay Thai fighters shared the stage with drag performers on street food carts. The ۱۱ acts were then driven on in tuk-tuks, each carrying their national flag.
Vietnam’s Tóc Tiên, a star at home for more than ۲۰ years, performed first, among dancers costumed as lotus leaves. Mang x Daou represented Thailand, a duo assembled for the contest in the host country who performed a duet staged like a musical number.
Nepal’s Pratik Himal Rai gave one of the most conventionally Eurovision performances of the night with Ananta Maya, a rock ballad staged with fire imagery and a large heart-shaped structure behind him.
He ended it by appealing for support for his country, which he said was “going [through a] very hard situation”. More than ۱,۵۰۰ people were killed and more than ۵,۰۰۰ were reported missing after a rock and ice avalanche near the Chinese border triggered catastrophic flash floods in August.
Bangladesh’s Beatmosphere, originally a nine-member a cappella and beatbox group, sang without a single instrument. Three of their members were left out of the final due to a rule capping each act at six performers on stage.
Nyendra from Bhutan sang dressed in the gho, his country’s national dress for men, against a backdrop of Himalayan peaks. Mongolia’s Beck performed in a reinterpreted deel, also a national costume.
Half the result was decided before the show began. The ۱۱ national juries voted at a dress rehearsal on Friday night and put the Philippines top with ۹۳ points, ahead of Vietnam and Malaysia.
The other half came from viewers around the world, who could vote online but not for their own country, and who were given eight free votes each and the option to buy ۱۰ more.
Laos’s entrant, Thinla, was unable to hear her own music during her performance, and her dress rehearsal was aired once all live performances were over. She finished fifth, with the night’s third-highest public score.
Carmelle receives no prize money but a trophy presented by Dara, the Bulgarian singer who won this year’s European contest, and will perform at Eurovision ۲۰۲۷ in Burgas.
Organisers have said the right to stage future editions will not automatically go to the winner, on the grounds that smaller countries lack the infrastructure.
Some of the clearest echoes of Eurovision’s camp traditions came through those who announced the votes.
South Korea’s jury points were read by Jo Kwon, a veteran pop star who has played Adam in the Korean production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the title role in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.
The Philippines’ were read by Vice Ganda, a gay comedian who is one of the biggest stars on Philippine television.
Meanwhile, the guest performer was the Thai singer Jeff Satur, who reached a wider Asian audience through KinnPorsche, a ۲۰۲۲ series in the genre of male same-sex romance dramas that has a large following across Asia.
Organisers intend the Bangkok show to be the first of many regional editions, with the executive producer, Assaf Blecher, saying that ۱۶ or ۱۷ territories had expressed interest in competing next year, among them China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
