Wonderful Song Contest 72

Wonderful Song Contest 72 will be the seventy second edition of the Wonderful Song Contest. The contest took place in Israel after the Israelian victory in the 71st edition. A total of 50 countries competed in Wonderful Song Contest 71. The 71st edition was won by and their song "Dovshaniya" by Shahar Saul, Agam Buhbut and Noroz, which got a total of 406 points. Prequalified countries for this edition are:, , , ,  and. They are directly qualified to the final, while the other competing countries are split into two semifinals. The Semi Final allocation draw took place on February 2023 at the WBU headquarters in Prague.

Information


On 1st February 2022 it was announced that Tokio will serve as the host city of the Wonderful Song Contest 72.

Host City
Haifa is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of 285,316 in 2019. The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area in Israel. It is home to the Baháʼí Faith's Baháʼí World Centre, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a destination for Baháʼí pilgrimage. Built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the settlement has a history spanning more than 3,000 years. The earliest known settlement in the vicinity was Tell Abu Hawam, a small port city established in the Late Bronze Age (14th century BCE). In the 3rd century CE, Haifa was known as a dye-making center. Over the millennia, the Haifa area has changed hands: being conquered and ruled by the Canaanites, Israelites, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, and the British. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Haifa Municipality has governed the city. As of 2016, the city is a major seaport located on Israel's Mediterranean coastline in the Bay of Haifa covering 63.7 km2 (24.6 sq mi). It lies about 90 km (56 mi) north of Tel Aviv and is the major regional center of northern Israel. Two respected academic institutions, the University of Haifa and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology the oldest and top ranked university in both Israel and the Middle East, are located in Haifa, in addition to the largest K–12 school in Israel, the Hebrew Reali School. The city plays an important role in Israel's economy. It is home to Matam, one of the oldest and largest high-tech parks in the country; Haifa also owns the only underground rapid transit system located in Israel, known as the Carmelit. Haifa Bay is a center of heavy industry, petroleum refining and chemical processing. Haifa formerly functioned as the western terminus of an oil pipeline from Iraq via Jordan. It is one of Israel's mixed cities, with an Arab-Israeli population of c.10%. After the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 Haifa became the gateway for Jewish immigration into Israel. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the neighborhoods of Haifa were sometimes contested. After the war, Jewish immigrants were settled in new neighborhoods, among them Kiryat Hayim, Ramot Remez, Ramat Shaul, Kiryat Sprinzak, and Kiryat Eliezer. Bnei Zion Hospital (formerly Rothschild Hospital) and the Central Synagogue in Hadar Hacarmel date from this period. In 1953, a master plan was created for transportation and the future architectural layout. In 1959, a group of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, mostly Moroccan Jews, rioted in Wadi Salib, claiming the state was discriminating against them. Their demand for "bread and work" was directed at the state institutions and what they viewed as an Ashkenazi elite in the Labor Party and the Histadrut. Tel Aviv gained in status, while Haifa suffered a decline in the role as regional capital. The opening of Ashdod as a port exacerbated this. Tourism shrank when the Israeli Ministry of Tourism placed emphasis on developing Tiberias as a tourist centre. Nevertheless, Haifa's population had reached 200,000 by the early 1970s, and mass immigration from the former Soviet Union boosted the population by a further 35,000. The Matam high-tech park, the first dedicated high-tech park in Israel, opened in Haifa in the 1970s. Many of Wadi Salib's historic Ottoman buildings have now been demolished, and in the 1990s a major section of the Old City was razed to make way for a new municipal center. From 1999 to 2003, several Palestinian suicide attacks took place in Haifa (in Maxim and Matza restaurants, bus 37, and others), killing 68 civilians. In 2006, Haifa was hit by 93 Hezbollah rockets during the Second Lebanon War, killing 11 civilians and leading to half of the city's population fleeing at the end of the first week of the war. Among the places hit by rockets were a train depot and the oil refinery complex.

Bidding phase
Only one main venue was announced as possible venue for the competition to be held. It has a capacity of 20,000 and several big concerts and sport events take place here.
 * The host city had to be near a major airport.
 * The venue must be available for at least six weeks before the contest and one week after the conclusion of the contest
 * The venue must not be open-air, but an air-conditioned building with a capacity of at least 10,000 and a minimum ceiling height of 15 metres (49 ft), insulated for sound and light.
 * The green room must be located as close to the arena as possible (or within it), with a capacity of 300.

Presenter(s)
On 1 February 2023 it was announced that Noa Kirel, Ran Danker, Lucy Ayoub will be presenters of the Wonderful Song Contest 72.

Noa Kirel was born in Ra'anana, Israel, to Israeli-born parents of Ashkenazi Jewish (Austrian-Jewish) descent and of both Sephardi Jewish and Mizrahi Jewish (Moroccan-Jewish) descent. She is the youngest child of Amir and Ilana Kirel and has two older brothers. Her father is the CEO of Glassco Glass, an imported-glass business headquartered at the Barkan industrial park. On her father's side, Kirel has relatives who were killed in the Holocaust. Her parents named her Noya but after being diagnosed with a serious kidney illness at three months old, a rabbi suggested a name change to Noa ('Noa' can also spell "movement" in Hebrew). He also predicted that she might even become a dancer. In February 2020, Kirel was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and served in a unique military band. She received an honorable discharge, completing her two-year mandatory service on 14 February 2022.

Ran Danker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, to a Jewish family. He is the son of Israeli actor Eli Danker. He went to Israel with his mother when he was two years old after his parents' divorce. He grew up in the Bavli neighborhood in Tel Aviv. During that time he was a member of the Ha-Horesh tribe choir of the scouts youth movement. Towards his Junior High year, Ran and his mother moved to Poleg, Netanya. Between high school and his army service, Ran participated in a few TV commercials: a promo of Channel 10; a commercial of Bank Leumi; and the cell phone company Cellcom. As a teenager, Ran was a delivery boy for Domino's Pizza in Netanya. He was a helicopter technician during his military service in the Israel Defense Forces. Danker was previously in a high-profile relationship with fellow HaShir Shelanu star, Ninet Tayeb. Israeli media labelled the pair "Raninet". Following the break up he was named the most eligible bachelor in 2007 by "Pnai Plus". He also reportedly dated his other HaShir Shelanu co-star, Ania Bukstein as well as the supermodel, Bar Refaeli. Danker and Refaeli's mothers are close friends. Danker and Tayeb remain friends and when asked in a 2019 Ynet interview about his former partner, Danker said that they will soon be in touch and will collaborate. The pair performed together in September 2019.

Lucy Ayoub is an Israeli television presenter, poet and radio host, formerly of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) and currently working for Keshet Media Group. Ayoub co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 alongside Assi Azar, Bar Refaeli and Erez Tal. Ayoub was born in Haifa, Israel. She is the daughter of an Arab-Christian father, and an Ashkenazi Jewish mother who converted to Christianity upon their marriage. Ayoub has one brother and three sisters. Her paternal grandmother was the daughter of Palestinian refugees who fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, leaving her in a convent in Israel, and later was adopted by a prosperous Arab-Christian woman named Lucy Khayat. Her maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors: her maternal grandfather had been in a Nazi concentration camp, while her maternal grandmother from Romania survived among partisans as a child. Ayoub celebrates both the Christian and Jewish holidays with different parts of her family, while personally being an atheist, saying "I’m an atheist and it means nothing to me that I was baptized [in church]". She attended a Catholic Carmelites school in Haifa. She wrote stories and poems in both Arabic and Hebrew. Ayoub was enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, serving for two years as a flight simulator instructor in the Israeli Air Force. Since 2016, she has studied philosophy, politics, economics, and law at the Tel Aviv University.



Provisitation list of Participants

 * Countries are in Prequalification Round next edition
 * Countries qualified to the grand final or semifinal
 * Country have won current edition
 * Country have finished on second place current edition
 * Country have finished on third place current edition
 * Country have finished on last place current editions final
 * Country have been disqualified from current editions final or semifinal
 * Country have in the final qualified to the semifinals or final

All Songs
All countries had to present their songs until 31st January 2023 at 22:00 CEST.

First Semifinal
The deadline to vote in semifinals is 07 February 2023 at 22:00 CET. , and  have to vote in this semifinal.

Second Semifinal
The deadline to vote in semifinals is 07 February 2023 at 22:00 CET. , and  have to vote in this semifinal.