Olly Alexander to Represent the UK at Eurovision 2024

With 2023 drawing to a close, plans for Eurovision 2024 are already underway. The 68th edition of the long-running musical contest will be held in Malmö after Sweden took home the win for the seventh time. The competition only confirmed this year's theme (it will remain "United By Music") in November and the number of participating countries at the end of last week, on December 14. There are 37 currently planned to participate, with a 38th (Romania) still in talks. However, the U.K. was quick off the mark, announcing 48 hours later that the artist selected to represent them in 2024 would be Olly Alexander.

As noted last year during our more extensive coverage when Eurovision was being held in the U.K., participant countries choose their artists in a variety of different ways, from hand-selected juries of musical peers and producers where the public has no say in anything that happens, to open call national contests where public voting determines everything, to something in between the two. The countries that follow the former model announce their artists early on since the process is much quicker, whereas the national contests run for months on TV and usually produce their artists last.

Each has its advantages. Those chosen early on have more time to rehearse, but they're also not the public's choice. National contests tend to produce fan-favorite darlings; however, those darlings are close to running on fumes by the time Eurovision happens since they have to perform week after week after week to get there.

Alexander is a solid choice by the jury because he is a fan favorite while not having to compete to become so. He first became known as part of the electro-pop band Years & Years, which released two albums during the 2010s and scored three Top Ten hits in the U.K., though the band never broke big outside of it. Alexander, meanwhile, became a British household name as an actor, first landing roles in the West End performing with the likes of Ben Whishaw and Judi Dench, guest roles on shows like Lewis and Skins, and then finally landing the lead role in Russell T. Davies' It's A Sin, which gained him recognition outside the U.K.

Years & Years has now broken up — the final album, Night Call, which came out in 2022, was effectively an Alexander solo project — leaving him to launch a solo career. Technically, that makes him eligible to compete as a new artist at Eurovision, albeit with the benefit of international name recognition and a built-in fan base in both the U.K. and the U.S. (The latter of which will be eligible to vote in the 2024 contest final!) In short, the jury has probably selected as well as possible. Now it's just a matter of seeing what song he turns out, co-written with Danny L Harle, and if the Eurovision voting public agrees.

Eurovision 2024 will stream on Peacock, with the Semi-Finals airing live on Tuesday, May 7, and Thursday, May 9, at 3 p.m. ET/12 n PT, and the Grand Final, also airing live at 3 p.m. ET/12 n PT, on Saturday, May 11, 2024.