Austria wins third Eurovision crown with JJ’s song ‘Wasted Love’

Austria won the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Swiss host city Basel on Saturday, in the country’s first victory since Conchita Wurst won in 2014.

Operatic singer JJ won ahead of Israel’s Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the October 7 attacks, who sang New Day Will Rise in the world’s biggest music competition, which was watched by more than 160 million people across the world.

The win was Austria’s third in the competition, following Conchita’s success and Udo Juergens’ victory in 1966.

JJ, 24, a countertenor opera singer from Vienna, combined elements of opera, techno and soprano heights in his song Wasted Love, winning the hearts of the professional juries and telephone voters.

“This is absolutely insane. My dreams came true,” said the singer, whose real name is Johannes Pietsch. “It’s out of this world.”

Going into the final, the Filipino-Austrian was second favourite behind Swedish comedy trio KAJ, whose song extolling the joy of saunas had been the hot favourite with bookmakers before finishing fourth.

Switzerland, hosting after Swiss rapper and singer Nemo won last year’s contest in Malmo, Sweden, finished 10th.

JJ said he wanted to give listeners an insight into his deepest thoughts when he wrote the song, and was happy it had resonated with so many fans.

“There’s no wasted love. Love is never wasted. There’s so much love that we can spread around, and we should use love as the strongest force on planet Earth,” he added.

His success was applauded by Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker, who said JJ was writing musical history.

“Dear JJ, you have moved Europe with your voice and sung Austria into the spotlight,” Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said on X.

JJ told reporters he would like next year’s event to be hosted in his hometown of Vienna, which hosted the 2015 final, adding he would like to be a TV host for the event.

Fans travelled from across Europe and beyond to Basel, with 100,000 people attending Eurovision events in the city, including the final.

Hermann Heyn travelled from Chile for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“We came from really, really far away for this,” he told Reuters. “We are not even competing, but we needed to be here.”