Eurovision Song Contest 1988

Host broadcaster RTÉ employed Declan Lowney, who was notable for being a director of music videos and youth programming, as director for this edition, in order to revamp the contest to attract and sustain a younger audience. The traditional scoreboard was replaced with two giant Vidiwalls located on either side of the stage, which also projected live images of the performers from the green room where the competitors set during the votes announcements, and a new computer-generated scoreboard was used.

The stage itself, conceived by Paula Farrell under chief production designer Michael Grogan, was also the largest and most elaborate ever constructed for the Eurovision Song Contest. To compensate for the fact that the vast stage took up most of the room in what is really an average size exhibition hall, the director deliberately darkened the hall where the audience was located and refused to use wide angled shots of the audience, in order to create the illusion of the venue being bigger than it actually was.

The Postcards featured the participants doing things in Ireland from culture, to tradition, to sports or sightseeing.

Lowney was also the director of the show's interval act, introduced after the competing songs and before the votes announcement. The interval act was a video of the popular Irish rock group Hothouse Flowers, which was filmed in eleven countries around Europe and was the most expensive music video ever produced in Ireland at the time.

Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point(s) for its top ten songs. The number of jury members changed this year from 11 which had been the limit since 1975 to 16 which would be used until 1996 when some countries abolished it after the contest in favour of televoting and fully after 1997.

This edition features one of the closest and most fickle-ending votes in the history of the contest. With three countries left to vote, the UK was well in the lead with 133 points against Switzerland's 118. With the third last country, France, only awarding Switzerland one point, the UK looked certain of victory, as even if Switzerland scooped the two final 12s, the UK would only need to gather eleven points from three juries combined to be unbeatable. However, France didn't award the UK any points, and the following country, Portugal, gave the UK a meagre three points while giving the maximum 12 to Switzerland, making the contest blown open between the two countries until the end of the voting.

With the conclusion of voting from the penultimate jury, the UK was holding a five-point lead over Switzerland. As the final jury, that of Yugoslavia, began to award its points in the customary ascending order, a lot of excitement-sighs were heard from the audience to see how the two rivals for victory would fare. Switzerland was the first to be named with six points, edging it into a one-point lead over the UK. After earlier strong votes from most countries to the UK, it seemed highly likely that the UK would be given one of the higher remaining set of points. However, as Yugoslavia announced its seven, eight, ten and twelve points, it transpired that it had awarded the UK no points at all (12 points from Yugoslavia went to France), [lower-alpha 1] and Switzerland was left with its one-point lead to savour a dramatic triumph.

Each performance had a conductor who was maestro to the orchestra, except for Iceland and Italy. Unlike in most years, the conductors took their bows after each song, not before.[3][1]

Prior to Cyprus' disqualification, John Themis was set to conduct and additionally play the guitar solo.

Bold indicates a previous winner.

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Hot Eyes	Denmark	1984, 1985
Boulevard	Finland	1987 (as backing group for Vicky Rosti)
Yardena Arazi	Israel	1976 (as part of Chocolate, Menta, Mastik), 1979 (as presenter)[lower-alpha 2]
Reuven Gvirtz (backing singer)		1979 (as part of Milk and Honey)
Yehuda Tamir (backing singer)
Dora	Portugal	1986
Tommy Körberg	Sweden	1969
MFÖ	Turkey	1985

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:

N.	Contestant	Nation(s) giving 12 points
3	Denmark	Austria,  France,  Netherlands
	Luxembourg	Finland,  Ireland,   Switzerland
	Switzerland	Germany,  Portugal,  Sweden
	United Kingdom	Belgium,  Italy,  Turkey
	Yugoslavia	Denmark,  Iceland,  Israel
2	Netherlands	Greece,  Luxembourg
1	France	Yugoslavia
	Ireland	Spain
	Norway	United Kingdom
	Sweden	Norway

Each country announced their votes in the order of performance. The following is a list of spokespersons who announced the votes for their respective country.