The Eurovision Song Contest 1957 was the second edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany and was held at the Großer Sendesaal des hessischen Rundfunks on Sunday 3 March 1957. The show was hosted by German actressAnaid Iplicjian. Like the first edition of the contest, this one was still mainly a radio programme, but there was a noticeable increase in the number of people with televisions. The winner was the Netherlands with the song "Net als toen", performed by Corry Brokken, written by Willy van Hemert and composed by Guus Jansen. This was the Netherlands' first victory in the contest. For some time, a rumour had existed that the privilege of hosting the 1957 contest was given to Germany because they had come in second place in 1956 with "Im Wartesaal zum großen Glück" by Walter Andreas Schwarz. In fact, not only were the official 1956 scores withheld, but the rule stating that the winning nation hosts the next year's Eurovision Song Contest had not yet been conceived. It was planned at the time that each participating country would take it in turns to host the event. However, as more countries wished to participate, this became impractical.
In this year's contest the Italian entry lasted for 5:09 minutes, whilst the UK's entry lasted for only 1:52 minutes. It was because of songs like the former that a rule was eventually introduced restricting each song to a maximum of 3 minutes; this rule still applies. In a change of rules from the previous year's contest, duos were allowed to compete. Danish representatives, Birthe Wilke and Gustav Winckler, were the first of such acts to participate under this rule change. At the end of their performance, the couple exchanged the longest kiss in the contest's history, although only people with televisions could actually see it. This was due to a member of the production staff forgetting to give a pre-arranged sign that the kiss should end. This was the first year where the juries were contacted by telephone. It was also the first time the Netherlands won the contest. Another notable change was that the national juries could not vote for their own song, a rule which would be continued throughout the contest's subsequent history.
Participating countries
, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Switzerland made their second appearances following their débuts in 1956. Austria and Denmark made their débuts; these countries had wanted to participate in 1956, but had applied to the European Broadcasting Union after the deadline for song submissions for that year's contest had passed, thus missing it. With those joining in 1957, the total number of countries was ten, three more than in the first ever contest. It was thought that the had also missed the participation deadline for the 1956 contest, but the EBU revealed in January 2017 that this was unfounded speculation spread by fans of the contest. The EBU further went on to explain that the "Festival of British Popular Song", a contest created by the BBC for the United Kingdom, was the inspiration that brought in changes to the contest format from 1957.
Conductors
Each performance had a conductor who conducted the orchestra.
The contest saw the return of two artists who had participated in the previous edition of the contest - Corry Brokken for Netherlands, and Lys Assia for Switzerland.
Results
Scoreboard
Broadcasters, commentators and spokespersons
Spokespersons
Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1957 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.
