The Eurovision winners from Sweden have made some of the biggest marks in the contest’s history.
For a song competition that has helped to launch some epic careers, Sweden has had its share of major successes. This country has won the contest seven times, tied with Ireland for the most in history. Of course, this means Sweden will have also hosted the contest seven times by the spring of 2024. In many ways, Sweden and Eurovision are inextricable from each other.
But who were those six (yes, six, not seven) winners of the Eurovision Song Contest from Sverige? Even if you somehow stumbled upon this website and have zero knowledge of Eurovision, I guarantee you have heard of at least one of them.
1974 Eurovision Winner: ABBA
See, we wasted no time getting to it. ABBA won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with their song “Waterloo,” and their victory helped propel them into the international spotlight. When they were an active group, they were one of the most commercially-successful bands of all-time, and it all started with a three-minute song that referenced Napoleon Bonaparte. 2024, ironically a Swedish host year of Eurovision, will be the 50th anniversary of Sweden’s first Eurovision victory. However, despite the fact that there will be numerous tributes to this iconic band, ABBA will not perform at Eurovision and are done with reunions. Can you blame them? As of 2024, their average age is about 76 years old.
However, being retired from the industry and having put ABBA to bed forever does not change the fact that this was an iconic victory. Eurovision had never seen a song like it in 1974, making it an easy standout and an all-time classic.
Sweden won the contest with 24 points, six ahead of Italy’s Gigliola Cinquetti, the 1964 victor.
1984 Eurovision Winner: Herreys
It took another decade for Sweden to win the contest again, and of all of the Eurovision winners from Sweden, these were some of the youngest at the time of their victory.
Herreys, a trio of brothers, two of whom were teens, took home their nation’s second win with “Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley.” This song was fun and peppy, and it also happened to go first in the final’s running order. As of 2024, this was the last winning song to be performed first. Sweden hopes to break that streak in 2024, as they drew the first position.
Sweden received 145 points in their victory, a narrow eight-point win over Ireland’s Linda Martin and “Terminal 3.” Don’t feel too bad for Linda, however: She won Eurovision eight years later and started an historic stretch of Irish Eurovision dominance in the 1990s.
1991 Eurovision Winner: Carola
Loreen may be the current reigning queen of Swedish Eurovision, but Carola is the OG queen of all. A very successful Eurovision performer, Carola Häggkvist appeared at the contest in three different decades, winning once for Sweden and placing in the top five the other two times.
Her 1991 winning song, “Fångad av en stormvind,” was the second of her three Eurovision performances. It was an upbeat, high-energy performance that is still catchy in the 2020s; that ending makes me want to chair-dance to this day.
What was notable about this victory was that it was one of only two grand final ties in Eurovision history. The first in 1969 blindsided the organizers, so all four tied countries won the contest, and the repercussions of this mess led to a better system being developed down the road. When Carola and France’s Amina tied in 1991 with 146 points, the tie-breaking procedure was a “count-back” of their top scores. The song with the most douze (12) points was the first tiebreaker, most 10 points was second, and so forth. Sweden and France had the same number of douze points, but Sweden had more 10s, and therefore Carola entered the winners’ circle.
1999 Eurovision Winner: Charlotte Nilsson (Perrelli)
2024 is the 25th anniversary of Sweden’s 1999 victory at the Eurovision Song Contest with “Take Me to Your Heaven.” At the time, she was known as Charlotte Nilsson, but is now called Charlotte Perrelli. Either way, the win still counts.
Which should come as no surprise to anyone so far, this was yet another upbeat Swedish winning song, and yes, it’s catchy. Not hard to break out into song when it starts playing:
♪♫ Take me to your heaven
Hold on to a dream
Take me to your heaven
When my nights are cold and lonely ♪♫
And so forthHaving lived through the 1990s, I would not even say it’s a quintessentially “90s song,” but it’s pretty damn good nonetheless.
Sweden won the contest in Israel by 17 points over Iceland. Charlotte would go on to another Eurovision appearance nine years later.
2012 Eurovision Winner: Loreen
Arguably one of the two most successful Eurovision performers ever (the other being Ireland’s Johnny Logan), Sweden’s Loreen won the Baku-based contest in 2012 with “Euphoria.”
This song had a completely different vibe than the four Eurovision winners from Sweden before it. Whereas the other prior victors were peppy pop songs, this was a dance banger. The live performance was captivating in its simplicity, with Loreen carrying the emotion of the performance by herself sans props, but very, very effectively nonetheless.
“Euphoria” was a heavy favorite going into the 2012 contest, and it won a landslide victory with 372 points, 113 ahead of the second-place Russian entry. Loreen received an astonishing 18 douze points in the final back when the jury vote and televote were combined. No country has ever received more douze points in the jury voting, though Ukraine received 28 douze points in the 2022 televote.
2015 Eurovision Winner: Måns Zelmerlöw
It only took Sweden three years to win the contest again after Loreen’s triumph, the shortest gap in between any two Swedish successes. Måns Zelmerlöw won this contest in Austria with his song “Heroes.”
While the song itself was very good and a personal favorite of mine, where this shined the brightest was in its staging. This was, in my opinion, one of the best-staged songs in Eurovision history. Måns and Sweden set a high bar with this live performance, and you know what they say: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Others in future contests tried to capture the same magic, but nothing quite rose to the level of the original.
Sweden took 365 points in this contest, a solid 62-point win over second-place Russia. Måns won the jury vote by a huge margin over Latvia, and was third in the televote behind Italy and Russia.
2023 Eurovision Winner: Loreen
The most recent of the Eurovision winners from Sweden was Loreen again in 2023, hence no surprise this article is coming out now right before Sweden hosts the contest. Her second winning effort was “Tattoo.” With this victory, she became the first woman, and the second act overall, to win Eurovision twice as a performing artist.
“Tattoo” had a different sound than “Euphoria,” two songs which will for eternity be compared though being over a decade apart, if for no other purpose that they are part of history for the same reasons. Once again, Loreen was a solo act on stage, but this time had one large prop helping to accentuate the staging of this powerful song. Unlike “Euphoria,” “Tattoo” was more pop and less dance.
Loreen saw off a difficult challenge in 2023 from Finland’s “Cha Cha Cha,” ultimately winning with 583 points to neighboring Finland’s 526; the next-closest song was Israel, far behind with 362. Just like in 2012, Loreen saw another jury landslide thanks to 15 douze-point scores, though Finland soundly won the televote with Sweden in second.
