Intervision Song Contest: why Russia is reviving its ‘cultural counterweight’ to Eurovision

Conceived in 1960s Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Putin ordered the competition’s return and the US has now confirmed its participation – is this domestic theatre or international outreach?

When singer-songwriter B Howard takes to the stage in Moscow this month, he’ll be making history. On 20 September the Los Angeles-born artist will be the first to represent the US at Russia’s revived Intervision Song Contest, a cultural spectacle that manages to be both nostalgic throwback and very modern geopolitical manoeuvre. While Eurovision has famously stretched its geographic boundaries to include Australia, Russia’s alternative contest represents a rather different kind of international outreach.

Russia dusting off the Intervision brand, largely dormant since 1980 apart from a brief reprise in 2008, follows the country’s exclusion from Eurovision since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Its expulsion cut off access to a platform that – while often mocked by British audiences – had served as a crucial tool of cultural diplomacy for decades.