Salvador Sobral and Portugal’s first Eurovision win, 53 years on

Saturday 13 May 2017 had already been a long day for Portugal. In the morning Pope Francis canonised the shepherd children Francisco and Jacinta Marto at Fátima. In the afternoon Benfica won a fourth league title in a row in Lisbon, a first for the club. That night, in the International Exhibition Centre in Kyiv, a 27-year-old singer called Salvador Sobral walked out eleventh of 26 finalists in the Eurovision Song Contest.3 sources3 sources

He did almost nothing that Eurovision acts usually do. There were no dancers, no costume change and no pyrotechnics. In a baggy dark jacket, his hair tied up, he stood at the microphone and sang a slow love song in Portuguese, written by his sister. Anastasia Tsioulcas of NPR Music said it made her think of 1970s love songs and film soundtracks.2 sources2 sources

When the votes were counted, ‘Amar pelos dois’ (‘Love for both of us’) had 758 points, 143 more than Bulgaria in second place. The national juries had put it first and so had the viewers. Portugal, which had been entering the contest since 1964 and had never finished higher than sixth, had won it.3 sources3 sources

The Ukrainian singer Jamala, who had won the year before, handed Sobral the glass microphone trophy. He took the stage microphone and, in English, told nearly 10,000 people in the hall and an estimated 200 million watching on television what he thought of most of the music they had heard that night.3 sources3 sources

The Eurovision Song Contest is run by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an alliance of public broadcasters. It has been held every year since 1956 except 2020, when the contest was cancelled. Each country sends one song, and the countries award one another points but may not vote for themselves. RTP, Portugal’s public broadcaster, first took part in the ninth contest, in Copenhagen on 21 March 1964.3 sources3 sources

To choose its singer RTP created a televised competition, the Festival da Canção. Its first winner was António Calvário, a crooner voted ‘King of Radio’ in five different years, with the ballad ‘Oração’ (‘Prayer’). In Copenhagen he scored no points at all. The night was also interrupted by a man who walked on stage during the Swiss song holding a banner that read “Boycott Franco and Salazar”, the dictators who then ruled Spain and Portugal.3 sources3 sources

Ten years later Portugal sent a song that the country remembers better than any of its early entries. On 6 April 1974 in Brighton, Paulo de Carvalho sang ‘E depois do adeus’ (‘And after the goodbye’), with music by José Calvário and words by José Niza. It finished joint last with three points, on the night ABBA won with ‘Waterloo’.3 sources3 sources

Less than three weeks later it was used to start a revolution. Junior officers of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), tired of 13 years of colonial war in Africa, had planned a coup against the Estado Novo, the authoritarian regime founded by António de Oliveira Salazar and then led by Marcelo Caetano. They needed a signal every unit could hear at once.3 sources3 sources

At 10.55pm on 24 April 1974 the announcer João Paulo Diniz played ‘E depois do adeus’ on Emissores Associados de Lisboa, a station heard across greater Lisbon. At 12.20am a second signal, José Afonso’s ‘Grândola, Vila Morena’, went out across mainland Portugal on the Catholic station Rádio Renascença. Less than 24 hours after the first signal, the regime had fallen.2 sources2 sources

On the scoreboard the following decades were thin. Portugal’s best results were seventh places for Carlos Mendes in 1972 and José Cid in 1980, until Lúcia Moniz came sixth in 1996 with ‘O meu coração não tem cor’. A year later Célia Lawson scored no points. The country missed the contest in 1970, 2000, 2002, 2013 and 2016, and after semi-finals began in 2004 it often failed to reach the Saturday final at all.2 sources2 sources

By 2016 Portugal held the record for the most appearances without a victory. It sat out the contest that year, and RTP relaunched the Festival da Canção for 2017, presenting it as a renewed window for Portuguese songwriters and singers.2 sources2 sources

Salvador Sobral was born in Lisbon on 28 December 1989, the younger brother of the singer-songwriter Luísa Sobral. At 10 he sang on the SIC talent show Bravo Bravíssimo, and at 19 he reached the last eight of Ídolos, the Portuguese version of the Idol format, before he was voted out. He has said such contests are fleeting and soon forgotten.5 sources5 sources

He studied psychology, and in 2011, on an Erasmus exchange in Mallorca, he began singing in bars and hotels. He moved to Barcelona to study jazz at the Taller de Músics school, where he discovered the trumpeter and singer Chet Baker. His early shows were inspired by Baker and drew on Brazilian bossa nova. His first album, ‘Excuse Me’, appeared in 2016, co-produced by Sobral with the pianist Júlio Resende and the Venezuelan composer Leonardo Aldrey.4 sources4 sources

For the 2017 Festival da Canção, RTP invited 16 composers and asked each to choose a performer. Luísa Sobral, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, picked her brother. In the final at the Coliseu de Lisboa on Sunday 5 March 2017, a combined vote of regional juries and the public sent ‘Amar pelos dois’ to Kyiv. Lusa’s report of the final said it led both votes; the agency’s review of the year said it topped the juries and came second with the public.3 sources3 sources

The song is a plea to a lost lover, sung in the first person. Observador called it a piano-bar ballad, written so that the space between low and high notes leaves the listener waiting for the next line. It ends with the line that gives it its title.2 sources2 sources

Not everyone thought it could win. Nuno Markl, a radio presenter who sat on the jury that sent the song through its heat, complained in April that self-appointed Eurovision experts were predicting another sad Portuguese song that would lose. He shared an article in the Spanish newspaper El País that praised Sobral. Other foreign coverage followed, and by the semi-finals several bookmakers had the song second. On the eve of the final they made it favourite.1 source1 source

Sobral reached Kyiv only on Sunday 7 May. Luísa stood in for him at the first rehearsals, and the two attended the opening event together. On Tuesday 9 May he won the first semi-final with 370 points. Portugal was back in a Eurovision final for the first time since 2010.3 sources3 sources

Since 2016 each country in the final has given two separate sets of points, one from a national jury and one from viewers. Under that system Portugal’s 758 was the highest total any song had scored, beating the 534 of Jamala’s ‘1944’ a year earlier. It included 30 maximum scores of 12 points.2 sources2 sources

Nine years on, it is still the record. The nearest any song has come is 631, for Kalush Orchestra’s ‘Stefania’ for Ukraine in 2022, and the winners of 2025 and 2026 scored 436 and 516.4 sources4 sources

Portugal’s own split was unusually even, and it topped both votes. Bulgaria’s Kristian Kostov came second with both. Moldova’s ‘Hey Mamma’, with its saxophone player, was third with viewers but won only 110 jury points. Portugal’s was also the first winning song performed entirely in a native language since 2007.3 sources3 sources

Sobral’s speech after the result was short and pointed. He said it in English, so the words below are his own.1 source1 source

The EBU’s press release quoted the core of it: “music is not fireworks”, “music is feeling” and “let’s bring music back”. Sobral then asked for his sister to come up, told the audience they ought to hear her, and the two sang ‘Amar pelos dois’ together in a hall that had gone quiet.2 sources2 sources

Sobral also used his time in Kyiv to speak up for refugees: at a press conference during the semi-final week he wore a sweatshirt reading “S.O.S. Refugees”. The day after the final, he and Luísa were met at Lisbon airport by hundreds of people. His concert dates sold out, and more were added around the country.2 sources2 sources

On 6 September 2017 Sobral posted a video saying he was stopping work to treat a health problem, that he could not say for how long, and asking for his privacy to be respected. He was to give a last concert before the break, free, in the gardens of the Casino Estoril that Friday.1 source1 source

On 8 December 2017 he had a heart transplant at the Hospital de Santa Cruz in Carnaxide, just outside Lisbon. The hospital group, the Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Ocidental, announced on 12 January 2018 that he had been discharged the day before after a “very satisfactory” recovery without complications, though he still had to avoid large crowds.1 source1 source

In February 2018 he spoke about it on RTP. He said he could not put into words what he felt on waking, admitted he had been afraid, and said his voice had become more fragile but that he expected it to recover. He had ended 2017 with a European Border Breakers Award and, with Luísa, the Foreign Press Association’s personality of the year prize.2 sources2 sources

The winner’s country usually hosts the next contest, so in May 2018 Eurovision came to Portugal for the first time. RTP staged it at the Altice Arena in the Parque das Nações, the former Expo ’98 site in eastern Lisbon, with semi-finals on 8 and 10 May and the final on 12 May. Forty-three countries took part, one of the largest fields to that date.3 sources3 sources

The slogan was ‘All Aboard!’, and the stage design drew on Portugal’s seafaring past. Unusually, there were no big LED screens; the show relied on lighting and moving structures instead. Four women presented it: Filomena Cautela, Sílvia Alberto, Daniela Ruah and Catarina Furtado. The fado singers Ana Moura and Mariza performed in the intervals.1 source1 source

On the night of the final Sobral came back to the stage that his win had brought to Lisbon. With Júlio Resende at the piano, he sang ‘Amar pelos dois’ with the Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso, as RTP had announced a month earlier. Israel’s Netta won with ‘Toy’. Portugal’s own entry, Cláudia Pascoal’s ‘O Jardim’, came last of 26 with 39 points.4 sources4 sources

A few weeks earlier, on 23 April 2018, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had made Luísa and Salvador Sobral commanders of the Order of Merit for what he called, in Portuguese, an “êxito singular”, a singular success. He praised a fragile song far from pyrotechnics and said the win mattered in a country so often chronically pessimistic.1 source1 source

Alongside his solo work, Sobral sang in Alexander Search, a project with Júlio Resende built on poems by one of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms, the invented authors under whose names Pessoa wrote. His solo albums since ‘Excuse Me’ are ‘Paris, Lisboa’ (2019), ‘bpm’ (2021), which was nominated for a Latin Grammy, and ‘Timbre’, toured in Brazil in 2023.2 sources2 sources

In 2024, his official biography says, he became the first Portuguese artist to perform at Spain’s Goya film awards. In 2025 he released a joint album with the Catalan singer Sílvia Pérez Cruz and toured Europe, Latin America and Japan with her. A fifth studio album of new songs by Brazilian composers, ‘A Flor do Recomeço’, was due in the second half of 2026.1 source1 source

Portugal’s results at Eurovision have been steadier since 2017. After failing to qualify in 2019, it reached the final every year from 2021 to 2025, with ninth place for MARO’s ‘Saudade, Saudade’ in 2022 and tenth for iolanda’s ‘Grito’ in 2024, before going out in the 2026 semi-final.1 source1 source

The EBU’s history of the contest records 2017 as the end of the longest wait for victory by any participating country. Sobral’s double first also stood alone for nine years: no winner topped both the juries and the public again until Bulgaria’s DARA, with ‘Bangaranga’, in Vienna in 2026.2 sources2 sources