The Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la Chanson) is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition. Each country participates via one of their national EBU-member television stations, whose task it is to select a singer and a song to represent their country in the international competition. The Contest has been broadcasted every year since its inauguration in 1956 and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. It is also one of the most-watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience figures having been quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally.

In the 1950s, as a war-torn Europe rebuilt itself, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)—based in Switzerland—set up an ad-hoc committee to search for ways of bringing together the countries of the EBU around a "light entertainment programme". At a committee meeting held in Monaco in January 1955, director general of Swiss television and committee chairman Marcel Bezençon conceived the idea of an international song contest where countries would participate in one television programme, to be transmitted simultaneously to all countries of the union.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2010 will be the 55th Eurovision Song Contest. The contest will take place at the Telenor Arena, in the municipality suburb of Bærum, Akershus county, which is situated in the western part of the Greater Oslo area in Norway. This follows Alexander Rybak's win at the 2009 Contest with "Fairytale". It will be the third time Norway has hosted the contest, having previously done so in 1986 and 1996. The semi-finals will take place on 25 and 27 May 2010, with the final on 29 May 2010. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has announced that the voting system used in the semi-finals will change from previous years to balance jury voting with televoting, while the return of the orchestra is also being proposed. 39 countries will take part in the contest, with Georgia returning to the contest, with Andorra, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Montenegro withdrawing(to pull back, to retreat). Lithuania originally announced their withdrawal from the competition, but was later among the 39 participants confirmed by the EBU. Eligibility to participate is not determined by geographic inclusion within the continent of Europe, despite the "Euro" in "Eurovision" — nor does it have any relation to the European Union.