Stars Contest

The Stars Contest, sometimes shortened to SC, or Stars, is a song contest on Instagram held among the members of the Stars Broadcasting Union since February 2016. The competition was based upon the existing Eurovision Song Contest held among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956. The current and official executive supervisor is @eurovisionstars.

The countries get to vote for each show (semi-final, wildcard round or final) to determine the qualifiers and the winner of the edition. The contest has also been broadcast outside Europe to several countries that do not compete.

So far, five different countries have won the competition and therefore hosted the contest. Apart from Turkey, who hosted due to being the organizer of the contest, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, Norway and Finland have all been winners and hosts of the contest. Bulgaria has won the contest three times while Sweden and Germany won the contest twice, with Bulgaria being the first to win two times in a row. The highest scoring winner, is Germany's Alice Merton who won the tenth edition with her song "No Roots" which got 225 points, 15 points ahead the runner-up.

History
On 18th February 2016, @eurovisionstars, former executive supervisor of the Stars Broadcasting Union decided to open an international music contest, in that every full member of the SBU can take part by sending artists representing their countries with songs. It was called Stars Contest. The name was inspired by the amount of stars on the space, stars are representing the music we convey among the galaxies. In the beginnings the contest was not fully developed so there were a lot of rule changes in that phase.

The first even Stars Contest started on 19th February 2016. It was held in Istanbul, Turkey which also was the first ever country to host the Stars Contest and also the first ever direct qualifier for the final. Thirty nations took part in the first edition each submitting one entry to the contest. Each country awarded 12 points to their favourite, 10 points to their second favourite and then 8 points to 1 point for the rest.

Germany was the first ever country to win the contest. The winner is traditionally set to be the host of the following edition.

Currently, the SBU Council has the control over the contest, and its members work in different terms of the contest.

Slogans
Since the first edition already, slogans were used for the contest. In each edition, the host broadcaster was in charge to decide the slogan of the edition and based on it, develope the contest's theme and visual design.

Participation
Any full member of the SBU is allowed to send a song for the Stars Contest. Countries that are not full members can apply for becoming one. The Stars Broadcasting Union has already accepted some countries that were not full members of the SBU at the beginnings of the Stars Contest. However, the SBU has also already declined a lot of nations and states that wanted to become a full member - and to participate in the Stars Contest.

Each full member has got a certain broadcaster that is responsible for their choice of the artists and songs the country is sending for each edition. Ninty-four nations have participated at least once. These are listed here alongside the edition in which they made their debut:

Format
The contest's has changed during the editions. Editions 1, 5-9 have all had three semi-finals and a final while editions 2-4 only had two semi-finals and a final. The numbers on qualifiers from each semi-final has changed during the editions. In the first edition, the top four scored countries from each semi-final advanced to the final. In the second edition, the top seven scored countries from each semi-final advanced to the final. In the third edition, the top twelve scored countries from each semi-final advanced to the final. In the fourth edition, the top ten scored countries from each semi-final advanced to the final. Since the fifth edition, the top eight scored countries from each semi-final advanced to the final.

Due to some of the borderline qualifiers scoring the same amount of points, there was a wildcard round introduced in editions 1, 2 and 7. The wildcard round was introduced in order to determine the qualifiers.

Since the very first edition the winning country of each edition is automatically chosen to be the host of the next edition. As the host broadcaster, the heads of delegation can decide the host city and the slogan.