Kross-European Song Contest of 1940

This was the 20th contest. There was a lot of controversy in this edition. Liam Bekaert was tragically killed in the German Invasion of Belgium in June 1940, two months after the contests end. Germany was kicked out of the edition for invading Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland as well as begin at war with two of the three big three members. This also led to the banning of Italy and Hungary and the withdrawal of Bulgaria.

Hosting
Poland had won the previous edition in 1939 but following the beginning of World War II, no longer existed. Due to Germany and most of the Axis being kicked out for obvious reasons, questions were raised over the placing of the host city. Due to France and the United Kingdom's war with Germany, there was a concern of hosting it in a mainland European city like Paris as a German attack could reach Paris very quickly and unexpectedly. Glasgow was internally chosen as the United Kingdom was separated by many countries on the mainland, a sea and half of it's own country and given the 7 months between planning and production, could allow for the contest to go along smoothly. Other candidate cities were Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin and Manchester.

Participants
The confirmation system was the same as 1937 and 1939 and would likely become standard. A representative from each country would come to the KESC HQ in London, United Kingdom to confirm or deny their participation.

The participants are shown in the Info box. Andorra surprisingly confirmed their participation for the contest. Bulgaria withdrew from the contest voluntarily even though they were not kicked out or ceased to exist.

There were four less countries competing in this. The semi finals did still happen but as a result of having 10 countries per semi, 5 would qualify from each. As a result of having very good recent scores, Switzerland would again be the go-to replacement for the fourth automatic qualifier member. Talks are to happen in November 1940 about whether Switzerland should become a permanent automatic qualifier as they do also pay a large share of the contest.

Grouping

 * France.png France
 * UK.png United Kingdom
 * Netherlands.png Netherlands
 * Switzerland.png Switzerland

Semi Final 1
25th March 1940: 20:00 UTC - 21:30 UTC

Semi Final 2
28th March 1940: 20:00 UTC - 21:30 UTC

Final
3rd April 1940: 19:30 UTC - 21:45 UTC. It used a system of 1pt, 2pt, 4pt, 6pt, 8pt, 10pt and 12pt