The Eurovision Song Contest 1963 was the eighth edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest and took place in London, United Kingdom. It was organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), who agreed to stage the event after France, who had won the 1962 edition, declined to host it due to financial shortcomings, also having hosted the competition in 1959 and 1961. The contest was held at the BBC Television Centre on Saturday 23 March 1963 and was hosted by Katie Boyle for a second time.

Sixteen countries participated in the contest, the same countries that had participated the previous year.

The contest this year was won by Denmark with the song „Dansevise“, performed by Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann. This was the first victory for any of the Nordic countries. Four countries got nul points, with Finland, Norway and Sweden failing to score any points for the first time and the Netherlands for the second time, becoming the first country to go two years in a row without scoring a single point.

Location
The BBC was willing to host the contest instead of the previous year’s winner France, as was the case in 1960. They would do so again in 1972 and 1974 because the winning broadcasters from the year before could not afford to produce the contest. The host venue was the BBC Television Centre, White City, London, which opened in 1960. It is one of the most readily recognisable facilities of its type having appeared as the backdrop for many BBC programmes. It remained to be one of the largest such facilities in the world until it redeveloped in March 2013.

Format
After being held on a Saturday for the first time for the 1961 edition, the contest was held on a Sunday for the 1962 edition before reverting back to being held on a Saturday again for this year’s edition. No contest has been held on any other day than Saturday ever since (not taking the eventual semi-finals into account).

Two studios (TC3 and TC4) were used: one for the mistress of ceremonies Katie Boyle, the audience, and the scoreboard; the other for the performers and the orchestra accompanying them. Unusually, a boom microphone (normally used for drama and comedy shows) was employed – the viewer couldn’t see this, so it appeared as if the artists were miming to their vocals. This was not the case, but this innovation was to create a new look for the contest.

Voting controversy
One controversy this year was during the voting. When it was Norway’s turn to announce their votes, the spokesman in Oslo, Roald Øyen, did not use the correct procedure in that the song number, followed by the name of the country, should have been announced before awarding the points. Katie Boyle asked Norway to repeat their results, but the Norwegian spokesman asked Katie to return to them after all the other results were in. When Katie went back to Norway again the votes had mysteriously altered, thus changing the outcome of the contest and giving the victory to Norway’s neighbours Denmark at Switzerland’s expense. In fact, the Norwegian spokesman had not given the correct votes on the first occasion, because votes from the 20 jury members were still being tallied.

Monaco was also asked to repeat their voting a second time as initially Monaco gave one point to both the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. However, when Katie Boyle went back to Monaco to receive the votes again Monaco’s one vote to Luxembourg was efficiently discarded (although this did not have any effect on the positions of the countries).

It has also been speculated as to whether the juries were indeed on the end of a telephone line or in the actual studio given how clearly their voices could be heard as opposed to sounding as though they were being redirected through a telephone line

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Language	Points	Place
1	United Kingdom	Ronnie Carroll	„Say Wonderful Things“	English	28	4
2	Netherlands	Annie Palmen	„Een speeldoos“	Dutch	0	13
3	Germany	Heidi Brühl	„Marcel“	German	5	9
4	Austria	Carmela Corren	„Vielleicht geschieht ein Wunder“	German, English	16	7
5	Norway	Anita Thallaug	„Solhverv“	Norwegian	0	13
6	Italy	Emilio Pericoli	„Uno per tutte“	Italian	37	3
7	Finland	Laila Halme	„Muistojeni laulu“	Finnish	0	13
8	Denmark	Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann	„Dansevise“	Danish	42	1
9	Yugoslavia	Vice Vukov	„Brodovi“ (Бродови)	Serbo-Croatian	3	11
10	Switzerland	Esther Ofarim	„T’en va pas“	French	40	2
11	France	Alain Barrière	„Elle était si jolie“	French	25	5
12	Spain	José Guardiola	„Algo prodigioso“	Spanish	2	12
13	Sweden	Monica Zetterlund	„En gång i Stockholm“	Swedish	0	13
14	Belgium	Jacques Raymond	„Waarom?“	Dutch	4	10
15	Monaco	Françoise Hardy	„L’Amour s’en va“	French	25	5
16	Luxembourg	Nana Mouskouri	„À force de prier“	French	13	8

Participants