text: By the 1960s, between 16 and 18 countries were regularly competing each year. Countries from outside the traditional boundaries of Europe began entering the contest, and countries in Western Asia and North Africa started competing in the 1970s and 1980s. Apart from Yugoslavia (a member of the non-aligned movement and not seen as part of the Eastern Bloc at the time) no socialist or communist country ever participated. However, the Intervision Song Contest which held four editions in the 1970s and 1980s (and a one-off revival in 2008) saw the participation of NATO and EEC members – including some from outside Europe like Canada – in addition to the Eastern Bloc countries of Intervision that had set up the contest. Only after the end of the Cold War did other countries from Central and Eastern Europe participate for the first time – some of those countries having gained or regained their independence in the course of the breakup of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. As a consequence, more countries were now applying than could feasibly participate in a one-night-event of reasonable length. Numerous solutions to this problem were tried out over the years. The  included a contest called Kvalifikacija za Millstreet which was a pre-qualifying round for seven of these new countries, and from , relegation systems were introduced to manage the number of competing entries, with the poorest performing countries barred from entering the following year's contest. From 2004, the contest expanded to become a multi-programme event, with a semi-final at the  allowing all interested countries to compete each year; a second semi-final was added to each edition from 2008.
  There have been 68 contests  making Eurovision the longest-running annual international televised music competition as determined by Guinness World Records. The contest has been listed as one of the longest-running television programmes in the world and among the world's most watched non-sporting events. A total of 52 countries have taken part in at least one edition, with a record 43 countries participating in a single contest, first in  and subsequently in  and . Australia became the first non-EBU member country to compete following an invitation by the EBU ahead of the contest's  in 2015; initially announced as a "one-off" for the anniversary edition, the country was invited back the following year and has subsequently participated every year since.