Tony Grox & LUCYCALYS have taken the Little Mermaid trophy by pulling out their hair (and the 150,000 euros) of the Benidorm Fest of 2026. His catchy song I will love you It was the most sung among the festival audience. But she has not been the only winner. RTVE has also won.
The public channel wins when it sets a social agenda. Better if it is with the cunning of gathering where we are as a society. With the production of the second life of Benidorm Festival removes the hornet’s nest from its own programming with an annual event that, in addition, attracts the interest of a younger audience that discovers artists who do not always have the opportunity to be visible in prime time. In this edition, it is evident that there has been a leap in production, visual quality and precision in the organization of teams, which is always the prelude to a better broadcast. Everything has flowed with scrupulous photography and visual realization.
And this is how the final was held. With the incentive of the high of the visit of remembered artists from the history of the festival. Those who sparked public debate from the city on the balcony of the Mediterranean. As the folkloric intensity of Melody and, in the final part, with the sublime Chanelwhich has lifted the auditorium and has not been able to avoid tears after stepping on such a stage again. Great artists do not contain their emotion. With moments like this, Benidorm Fest Has stirred with recent memories and memories forever an edition that lacks narrative tension, without the participation of Spain in Eurovision. And he has turned to his recognizable (and intense) winners.
The Eurovision morbidity generated passion in the audience. We had to foresee if we were going to succeed, if we were going to eat our snot and if we should make changes to the song for the better. The controversy was served. And we live in a society unaccustomed to controversy as entertainment: Without polarized sparks, everything matters less to us. He Benidorm Fest 2026 has been reduced in the script Eurovision and has tried to give more packaging to the festival itself with the celebration of its fifth anniversary on a night that has also had time for nostalgia. For a start, Jesus Vazquez has sung And I kissed you and, later, the entire auditorium singing It’s you of youths Hair on end. A nod to the most veterans of the place. A milestone in Eurovision history. A transgenerational anthem for a program that is carried out from a tourist capital that refers to the joy of eternal vacations. Look, Just like Javi Calvo and Javier Ambrossi said when they showed their house with a bookstore, swimming pool and lots of Porcelanosa marble.
But to savor the benefits of leisure we also need to know that everything has an expiration date. The very end of the Benidorm Fest 2026 has referred to a cycle closure. To take a run. We must take flight towards broader horizons. It takes a bigger leap, knowing what we are and where we come from. The success of this format has a lot to do with the diversity of brilliant ideas (even when they were duller) that treasured its first edition. The one that hooked large audiences from the national plurality: bringing together artists of different styles and origins. He did it in songs and in staging: with Rigoberta, Chanel, Rayden, Tanxugueiras and many others. However, this time, it has been decided to unify the staging under the same artistic director, Sergio Jaén. Its virtue is that it has brought international experience that has led to a boost in the way of working and the precision of the result. Another story is that there are many stagings for one person to take on and these types of programs grow in the plurality of views. Although they are coordinated by the same artistic director.
In this sense, to win larger audiences from the first semi-final, The general aesthetic tone of the program has been dark. Darkness is not bad, but if it turns into monotony it can homogenize the performances and, when it also spreads to the entire auditorium, it diminishes the feeling of an event. Which invites the viewer to go to other channels. Especially when it does not distinguish the artists as they are largely unknown to large audiences. The personal seal of the good set designer should be less showy than his ability to enhance the unique charisma of each artist.
He has achieved it with Rosalindawho came third. Because she focuses the entire staging of her song on the beauty of what she wants to tell. There is experience towards a place. While most performances revolve around an element to fill the time of the musical theme, here is a sensitive story. New situations do not stop happening in a sequence shot with shadows, red light that breaks and an attitude to the camera of an artist who not only feels what she sings, she transmits it. Rosalinda brings the scenery to life, while in most of her companions’ films the scenery is what drags them along.
To adapt a song to a live show, it is essential to capture a micro story consistent with the candidacy and, above all, one that grows and feeds the viewer’s curiosity. Even looking for micro plots that the public can pick up on in the days after the broadcast. This way the performance transcends the program itself and remains in the collective imagination. As Bad Bunny has done with his bright Super Bowl party full of winks. (We explain it here).
In this “Benifest”, the staging was very good technically, but at times it seemed like a marathon of gloomy proposals that has tried to alleviate the scale of the final with an intelligent order in search of the complementarity of the artists that would favor a greater rhythm, plurality and a greater excitement of the songs among the public. Not only in song typologies, but also in aesthetics. With its touches of latent and patent references, literal and ironic, in the interludes that weave the script. Special mention to the wonderful promotion about the history of RTVE from the unprejudiced view of children. We have all been those children. May the reluctance of growing up not take away those eyes full of the excitement of everything to learn.
He Benidorm Fest It has the grace of being an event from a city with an entity as overwhelming as Benidorm, full of skyscrapers illuminated with LEDs and neons, and it has the strength of being produced from a public channel that must portray a country. Also through the disparity of music, artists and talents, learning from the lucid history of Eurovision and, at the same time, taking the pulse of what makes us unique as a country. Spontaneity is our DNA and it cannot be taken away from us even when we and cero points. Neither does our TV and our music. We are diversity, we are creativity, we are all the colors we can imagine and even some more. Thus TVE remains fully alive. Thus television made us love television so much. This way he removed prejudices from us without the need for trenches. Because with their stories made into naughty images they allowed us to discover other worlds that are in this one. Other worlds of colors, of course.