Thai voters have rejected the military-backed government as two opposition parties appear to be set for coalition talks.
Initial results show the Move Forward and Pheu Thai parties surging ahead of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.
The election has been described as a turning point for Thailand which has experienced military coups in its recent years.
Mr Prayuth led the last coup in 2014 and sought another term in office.
But he has faced strong election challenges from Move Forward and Pheu Thai which are two anti-military parties.
Move Forward is led by former tech executive Pita Limjaroenrat, while Paetongtarn Shinawatra - the daughter of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra - is the Pheu Thai candidate.
With 97% of the vote counted, a calculation by Reuters news agency based on data from the Election Commission suggested Move Forward would win the most seats followed by Pheu Thai in second place.
Mr Pita described the night's results as "sensational" and promised his party would remain opposed to military-backed parties when forming a government.
The party would seek talks with Pheu Thai and a coalition deal was "definitely on the cards", he told reporters.
Pheu Thai leader Paetongtarn Shinawatra congratulated Move Forward on their success and said "we can work together".
"We are ready to talk to Move Forward, but we are waiting for the official result," she added.
But despite their success, Move Forward and Pheu Thai may still face a battle to take power.
The new prime minister will be chosen jointly by the 500 elected MPs and 250 senate members appointed by Mr Prayuth's junta - stacking the deck in the army's favour.
The senators have always voted in favour of the current, military-aligned government, and never in favour of the opposition.
Getty Images
Vote counting got underway after polls closed at 17:00 (10:00 GMT) on Sunday - nine hours after voting began at 95,000 polling stations across Thailand.
About 50 million people were expected to cast their ballots to elect 500 members of the lower house of parliament - and some two million people had voted early.
The Election Commission is not expected to officially confirm the final number of seats won by each party for several weeks.
But it marks a significant shift in public opinion in Thailand as voters of all ages appear to have been willing to take a chance on relatively untested and idealistic young politicians.
Weeks later, a pro-military party formed the government and named Mr Prayuth as its PM candidate in a process that the opposition said was unfair.
The following year a controversial court ruling dissolved Future Forward, the previous iteration of Move Forward, which had performed strongly in the election thanks to the passionate support of younger voters.
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A close presidential election in Turkey – a vote which could end President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 20 years in power – increasingly appeared to be heading for a run-off as a tense count continued on Sunday night.
Both Mr Erdogan’s party and the opposition, led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, tried to claim the momentum for their candidates as it seemed neither candidate would cross the 50 per cent threshold required for an outright win. Both Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the People’s Republican Party (CHP) clashed over coverage of the ballot count, a sign of how fractious this contest has become.
Expectations ahead of the presidential vote, taking place alongside parliamentary elections, was that it would be close. Mr Erdogan is fighting for his political life against an emboldened and unusually broad-based six-party opposition united behind Mr Kilicdaroglu. A run-off between the pair would take place on 28 May.
Counts provided by pro-government and pro-opposition sources differed markedly as midnight approached. Results collated by the state-owned Anadolu news agency showed Mr Erdogan holding 49.9 per cent of the vote compared to 44.4 per cent to Mr Kilicdaroglu, with 91 per cent of votes counted. Another poll by the opposition Anka news agency showed that with 95 per cent of ballots counted, Mr Erdogan had 49 per cent and Mr Kilicdaroglu 45 per cent. Another count by Mr Kilicdaroglu’s CHP Party, showed him with 47.2 per cent of the vote compared to Mr Erdogan’s 46.8 per cent.
Opposition leaders accused the state news agency, Anadolu, of displaying a distorted count that favoured Mr Erdogan. The Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, and Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, both publicly criticised the vote-counting process and urged voters to dismiss them. “We are leading,” Mr Kilicdaroglu tweeted. Mr Erdogan then hit back on Twitter, saying: “While the election was held in such a positive and democratic atmosphere and the vote counting is still going on, trying to announce results hastily means usurping the national will.”
Turkey’s election authority, the Supreme Electoral Board, said it was providing numbers to competing political parties “instantly” but would not make the official results public until the count was completed and finalised. By 0100 local time [GMT 2200] it had officially logged 69 per cent of the votes cast.
Ultra-nationalist presidential candidate Sinan Ogan, who results indicated would probably receive about 5 per cent of the vote, reduced the chances of either Mr Erdogan or Mr Kilicdaroglu gaining a clear win.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu addresses supporters in Ankara on Monday
The verbal sparring between the candidates during the count followed a generally calm and orderly day of voting, at the end of a campaign season punctuated by violence and divisive rhetoric. Long lines formed at schools converted into polling stations. Turks normally vote for national elections in very high numbers, and today’s turnout looked even higher than previous ballots.
Voters cited concerns about the economy, which has been on a downward spiral for years, as the primary issue driving their votes, as well as the slow government response to the devastating earthquake in southeast Turkey that killed 50,000 people in February. But there are also concerns about the authoritarian drift of the country under Mr Erdogan, whose party has dominated the country’s politics for more than two decades. It has allowed Mr Erdogan to shape the country in his image, with crackdowns on dissent a regular feature of his years in power.
“Without democracy and freedom, you can’t have any economy,” said Nil Adula, a 74-year-old earlier in the day, as he prepared to vote in central İstanbul. “The most important thing is that the justice system is working properly.”
Voters were also electing legislators to fill Turkey’s 600-seat parliament, which has lost much of its legislative power under Mr Erdogan’s executive presidency. Mr Kilicdaroglu and the six-party opposition coalition he leads are aiming to win both the presidency and a majority in parliament, promising to enact sweeping reforms that would return the country to a parliamentary democracy.
Idris Sinan, 18, voted for the opposition in his first-ever election
(Yusuf Sayman for The Independent)
The elections are being intently watched by Western nations, the Middle East, Nato and Moscow, as the united opposition try to dislodge a leader who has concentrated nearly all state powers in his hands and worked to wield more influence on the world stage.
Mr Erdogan, along with the United Nations, helped mediate a deal with Ukraine and Russia that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach the rest of the world from Black Sea ports despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. The agreement is set to expire in days, and Turkey hosted talks last week to keep it alive.
However, Mr Erdogan also has held up Sweden’s quest to join Nato and has been a difficult partner for the West at times, not being afraid to talk tough or dig his heels in. As one of President Vladimir Putin’s most important allies, a defeat would unnerve the Kremlin, while the president has also clashed with a number of Middle East leaders.
The outcome was always likely to hinge on slivers of swing voters that include ethnic Kurds – who have voted for either the AKP or leftist parties traditionally – Turkish nationalists, and at least 5 million first-time voters whose allegiances remain unclear.
Mr Erdogan struggled to connect with Generation Z voters ahead of the vote, who appeared unmoved by his appeals to conservative and Islamic values.
“I see voting as a tool to change and influence the government from within,” said Idris Sinan, an 18-year-old high school student and first-time voter, as he emerged from a polling station.
Opposition party official Cigdem Gulduval helps organize meals for poll workers
(Yusuf Sayman/ The Independent)
“We have been ruled by this party, the AKP, for 20 years... our country [has] become poor and more lawless,” he added.
Mr Erdogan also alienated ethnic Kurds, who used to vote for him in large numbers but – in a historic shift – embraced the secular centre-left candidacy of Mr Kilicdaroglu. “The election for us is about democracy and cultural and political rights,” said Mehmet Uzum, a 52-year-old Kurdish businessman in the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul.
He said that Mr Erdogan and the AKP became toxic to Kurds since they partnered with the nationalist National Movement Party (MHP).
“We had a lot of friends who were AKP but then they switched to CHP because of the economy and all the religious talk,” said his daughter, Gizem, 22.
Voters emerge from a balloting station in the Istanbul district of Fatih
(Yusuf Sayman/ The Independent)
But many voters said they were convinced by Mr Erdogan’s nationalist stance that the president said would prioritise Turkey’s security. That also Included attempts to associate the opposition with the West and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed separatist group that the US and EU label a terrorist organisation.
“We are not for America. We are not for the PKK,” said Faruk Baba, a 67-year-old clothing shop proprietor in the Fatih district of Istanbul.
When reminded that the Taliban of Afghanistan had endorsed Mr Erdogan he replied: “The Taliban are Muslims. We are Muslims.”
Among AKP supporters, many cited conspiracy theories spouted by Mr Erdogan in previous weeks that the opposition are a proxy for Western powers.
Voters wait in line to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections
(Yusuf Sayman/The Independent)
“Erdogan has stood strong for us,” Ziya Uztok, a 73-year-old in Uskudar. “Kilicdaroglu is an American project.”
“I accept Kilicdaroglu as a fellow citizen, but I would not vote for him,” he said.
However, the country’s faltering economy threatened the steadfast support conservative Turks have given Mr Erdogan for years. In a bid to secure support from citizens hit hard by inflation, the president has increased wages and pensions and subsidised electricity and gas bills, while showcasing Turkey's homegrown defence and infrastructure projects.
On a side street in Fatih, upbeat CHP organisers amassed meals to hand their volunteers throughout the district.
“Before there were certain neighbourhoods that we couldn’t go to campaign,” said Cigdem Gulduval, a local opposition party official.
“Now they’re more receptive. They’re all paying high prices at the same butchers as we are. They’re all paying the same gas bills. They’ll have to wait three or four months to get an appointment at the doctors.”
The gap between the two leading candidates continues to narrow as more big-city votes – generally favouring opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu – come in, but Turkish news agencies are still reporting different numbers.
They agree on one thing, however: a runoff now looks increasingly likely.
The state news agency, Anadolu, is reporting that more than 90% of votes have been counted. It has President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 49.8% – crucially, below the 50% needed to avoid a runoff – and Kılıçdaroğlu on 44.4%.
The privately owned Anka agency is reporting that 94% of votes have so far been counted. It has Erdoğan on 49.02% and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on 45.2%.
In either case, as things are at the moment, the presidential election is heading for a second round on 28 May.
The mayor of Ankara, a senior member of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s opposition CHP party, has said he expects his candidate to finish ahead of President Erdoğan.
“There is a short time left to get all the results,” Mansur Yavas told a joint press conference in Istanbul with the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu.
“When we see them, we will see our leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu finishing this round as the front-runner.” But Yavas said there was now “a high possibility” that the race would go to a second round.
The electoral council, meanwhile, which will announce the final result, has said a total of 69% of votes – cast both at home and abroad – have been entered into its system.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is registered to vote in Istanbul, has made a surprise appearance there, mingling with supporters, before getting into his car and heading to the capital, Ankara to await the official results.
As we wait for the last few million votes in the presidential election to be counted, we shouldn’t forget today’s other poll: the election for Turkey’s 600-seat parliament.
At present over 80% of ballot boxes have been opened and Erdoğan’s People’s Alliance (a coalition of right-leaning and right-wing parties, including his AKP’s coalition partner MHP) appear on track to become the largest block. No surprises there.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s opposition Nation Alliance, led by his CHP (with the right-wing Iyi Party) is the second largest, and appears to have bagged around a third of the votes (35.6% of the total, according the state news agency Anadolu).
Erdoğan’s former economy tsar, Ali Babacan, and former foreign policy guru, Ahmet Davutoglu, are both running on the CHP ticket (despite having established their own parties in the run up to the election) and don’t appear to have significantly impacted the Nation Alliance’s share of the vote.
But the CHP did well on along Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, in Thrace and in the major cities of Izmir, Istanbul and the capital Ankara.
The results also indicate a strong showing for nationalist parties. MHP was real the surprise performer tonight. At the present count, the MHP and its splinter party, Iyi, have about 20% of the vote between them, though they represent opposing camps in this race.
The Yesil Sol party, a successor to the HDP, has swept up the country’s south-eastern region with strong showings in Diyarbakir, Hakkari and Sirnak (over 60%). Most of this region also voted strongly in favour of opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Most people will have their eyes on the results from the presidential elections, which increasingly look like they’ll go to a second round.
But the Turkish parliament remains an important institution and will have a major role in the coming government, either as a spoiler for a president who doesn’t control it, or a boon for a president whose political allies are represented in it.
Despite the powerful executive presidency Erdoğan introduced in 2018, the parliament has the power to declare war, ratify treaties, pass budgets, amend the constitution and scrutinise the activities of the government.
Members, officials and supporters of both candidates’ parties are waiting for confirmation of the results in a presidential race that now looks likely to head to a second-round runoff in two weeks’ time.
It could be some time before we get an official result.
Ahmet Yener, the head of Turkey’s supreme election council, – which will announce the final figures – has said it has entered just over 47% of domestic votes and 12.6% of votes cast abroad into its system.
In short statement outside the council’s headquarters, Yener also rejected opposition allegations that it was deliberately delaying publishing some results.
The gap between the two leading candidates continues to narrow as more big-city votes – generally favouring opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu – come in, but Turkish news agencies are still reporting different numbers.
They agree on one thing, however: a runoff now looks increasingly likely.
The state news agency, Anadolu, is reporting that more than 90% of votes have been counted. It has President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 49.8% – crucially, below the 50% needed to avoid a runoff – and Kılıçdaroğlu on 44.4%.
The privately owned Anka agency is reporting that 94% of votes have so far been counted. It has Erdoğan on 49.02% and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on 45.2%.
In either case, as things are at the moment, the presidential election is heading for a second round on 28 May.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tweeted to criticise opposition attempts to declare the result ahead of time, and – as his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu did earlier – to ask party and election officials to remain vigilant with ballot boxes.
“While the election was held in such a positive and democratic atmosphere and the vote counting is still going on, trying to announce results hastily amounts to a usurpation of the national will,” he said.
“I ask all of officials and my colleagues to stay at the ballot boxes, no matter what, until the results are officially finalised. I congratulate all citizens who voted in the name of democracy and are taking part in the election work.”
Ultranationalist Sinan Oğan, currently credited with about 5% of the vote and a potential kingmaker in the event of a runoff, has said he thinks the election will probably go to a second round on 28 May.
“We see a high probability that the elections will go to the second round” since neither main candidate is on course to win 50% of the vote, he said, adding that “Turkish nationalists and Kemalists are key to this election”.
Opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has posted another tweet suggesting that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s vote share, which began the evening at 60%, has now fallen to below 50%.
He urged election officials to stay alert and not abandon their posts during the rest of the evening.
“The fiction, which started with 60%, has now dropped below 50%,” Kılıçdaroğlu said. “Ballot observers and election board officials should never leave their places. We will not sleep tonight, my people. I warn the YSK [election commission], you have to provide data from the provinces.”
We have just arrived at the Istanbul headquarters of the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), after a journey across Istanbul where the streets were remarkably quiet.
Earlier today, people were outside enjoying a day of spring weather and cheerfully walking to the polls no matter who their chosen candidate was, but as the results started to come in, the streets fell silent – it felt like basically everyone was at home glued to their television sets.
If they did venture out, they were frantically following on their phones. The mood at the CHP is predictably tense – everyone here is quietly glued to any screen showing the results.
As the vote count nears 80% of votes counted – at least, according to the state news agency Anadolu (which has been the source of plenty of controversy so far this evening) – the race is looking increasingly close and we’re starting to see two parallel narratives emerge.
According to the opposition, they are ahead. According to Erdoğan and the spokesperson of his Justice and Development (AKP) party as well as the state news agency, the opposition is falling behind. The opposition claim this is due to the order in which the ballots have been counted, and that the government has slow-walked counting in opposition-majority areas.
As the results started to trickle in a couple of hours ago, leading opposition MPs held multiple press conferences to drive home the message that they are winning, at least according to their data. Now we are seeing Erdoğan and the AKP pushing back, although we are likely to hear more from the CHP as this long night continues.
Ali İhsan Yavuz, an AKP MP in charge of election coordination, just told reporters outside their headquarters in Ankara that “there is no panic and there is no need to blame the institutions”. He added: “We are ahead in both the parliamentary and the presidential results.”
Reuters is reporting sources in both President Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party and his opposition rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP as saying that based on results so far, neither is likely to clear the 50% threshold needed for an outright win.
With 75% of votes counted, the state-owned Anadolu news agency has Erdoğan on 50.76% and Kılıçdaroğlu on 43.43%. The private Anka agency also has Erdoğan ahead, but by a much narrower margin: roughly 48% to 47%.
The steady performance of the third candidate, nationalist Sinan Oğan, unchanged at just over 5.3%, makes a second round – scheduled for a fortnight’s time on 28 May – more likely, several analysts have said.
Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavaş, from Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s centre-left CHP party, has said that based on data from party workers monitoring the count, the retired civil servant is ahead.
Turkish news agencies are reporting that President Erdoğan has a lead of between two and eight percentage points with about two-thirds of votes counted.
Yavaş insisted Kılıçdaroğlu was still in a position to win the election outright on Sunday night by securing more than 50% of the vote. Turkey’s supreme election council is expected to announce the official result later.
Ömer Çelik, a spokesperson for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party, has accused opposition leaders of “an attempt to assassinate the national will” by claiming the Anadolu state news agency is distorting the results (see 18.03 BST).
“Even before the results are finalised, all of a sudden the opposition alliance’s spokesperson and mayors appear on TV. As usual, they began to say that Anadolu Agency is manipulating data,” Çelik said.
More than half the votes have now been counted in Turkey’s presidential election and the gap between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his chief rival, opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, continues to narrow.
According to the Anadolu state news agency, which the opposition has accused of deliberately releasing results to show the outgoing president ahead, the count with nearly 53% of votes tallied stands at:
Erdoğan : 51.8%
Kılıçdaroğlu : 42.3%
Oğan: 5.3%
The privately owned Anka news agency, however, has Kılıçdaroğlu already ahead with slighty less of the vote tallied. His CHP party has said their candidate is leading according to its data, and is on course to clear the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff and be declared president on Sunday night.
Supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AKP party have gathered to cheer outside its Istanbul headquarters as early results show the incumbent president ahead.
Analysts have said the gap between Erdoğan and his rival, united opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, should continue to narrow as the evening wears on.
Opposition vice-presidential candidates Mansur Yavaş and Ekrem İmamoğlu have just given a press conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, lashing out at the state news agency Anadolu for what they said was broadcasting distorted results.
The opposition accuse Anadolu of broadcasting counted AKP votes first in a warped picture of the overall result, and say they are in the lead.
The largest opposition party, the Republican People’s party (CHP) is running a parallel count by stationing their own observers at every ballot box and photographing every ballot as it is counted.
“According to our results, with 23.87% of the votes counted, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is ahead,” said Yavaş, who is also Ankara mayor, adding: “This data comes from all over Turkey and I can say that we are ahead in Istanbul and Ankara.”
İmamoğlu, whose election as mayor of Istanbul in 2019 was a close race that was ultimately disputed by Erdoğan and re-run before he was declared the winner a second time, also directed his anger at Anadolu.
“Unfortunately, we are still experiencing the scene we see in every election. Another case of Anadolu Agency [...] AA’s reputation is below zero,” he said.
Presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu simply tweeted: “We are ahead.”
With more than a third (38.3%) of votes counted, according to the Anadolu state news agency (AA), the gap between the two leading candidates is shrinking.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now stands on 52.7%, his centre-left opposition rival Kamel Kılıçdaroğlu on 41.4%, and the nationalist Oğan on 5.4%.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has said early results are looking positive for Kılıçdaroğlu.
Faik Öztrak, the party’s spokesperson, said in a televised speech:
According to the data we received so far, we see the table very positively. When the number of ballot boxes opened reaches a meaningful figure, we will start to share the number of votes.
The Guardian’s video team were on the ground in Turkey last week and produced a fascinating film about the importance of the Kurdish vote in these elections.
Kurdish voters, many of them anti-Erdoğan, account for about 10-15% of the country’s electorate and their ballots could prove crucial. You can watch the film here:
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Ukraine claims its soldiers have retaken a further one square kilometre area around Bakhmut as fierce fighting continues in the city. On Sunday morning, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Berlin for talks a day after Germany pledged billions of euros worth of new weapons to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s defence ministry is claiming its soldiers have regained one square kilometre of territory around Bakhmut, as President Zelenskyy arrives in Berlin to shore up overseas support for the long-anticipated counteroffensive.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar says Ukrainian troops are advancing “dynamically” in the suburbs of Bakhmut.
But Russia also claims Wagner assault units “liberated a neighbourhood in the north-western part” of the city.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Berlin early Sunday for talks with German leaders about further arms deliveries to help his country fend off the Russian invasion and rebuild what's been destroyed by more than a year of devastating conflict.
A Luftwaffe jet flew Zelenskyy to the German capital from Rome, where he held talks on Saturday with Pope Francis and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.
On the eve of his arrival - which took place amid tight security - the German government announced a new package of military aid for Ukraine with aid worth more than €2.7bn, including tanks, anti-aircraft systems and ammunition.
"Already in Berlin. Weapons. Powerful package. Air defence. Reconstruction. EU. NATO. Security," Zelenskyy tweeted Sunday, in an apparent reference to the key priorities of his trip.
After initially hesitating to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, Germany has become one of the biggest suppliers of arms to Ukraine, including Leopard 1 and 2 battle tanks, and the sophisticated IRIS-T SLM air-defence system. Modern Western hardware is considered crucial if Ukraine is to succeed in its planned counteroffensive against Russian troops.
After meeting Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior officials at the Chancellery, the two leaders are expected to fly to the western city of Aachen for Zelenskyy to receive the International Charlemagne Prize awarded to him and the people of Ukraine.
Organisers say the award recognises their resistance against Russia's invasion is a defence "not just of the sovereignty of their country and the life of its citizens, but also of Europe and European values."
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By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent
Sweden's Loreen has won the Eurovision Song Contest for the second time, with her soaring pop anthem Tattoo.
The star, who last won the competition in 2012, saw off competition from Finland's Käärijä in a nail-biting vote.
The UK's Mae Muller failed to replicate Sam Ryder's success last year, coming in 25th place - one above bottom.
And the Princess of Wales made a surprise cameo, playing the piano with last year's winners Kalush Orchestra.
Loreen is the only the second person - and the first woman - to win Eurovision twice, following Ireland's Johnny Logan.
"This is so overwhelming," she said as she collected the trophy. "I'm so grateful. I'm so thankful."
"In my wildest dreams, I didn't think this would happen."
Sweden's victory means it will host next year's competition - on what will be the 50th anniversary of Abba's historic victory with Waterloo in 1974.
But Ireland crashed out of this year's contest at the semi-final stage for the fifth year in a row - a result their head of delegation described as "devastating".
This year's top three acts were:
Sweden: Loreen - Tattoo (583 points)
Finland: Käärijä - Cha Cha Cha (526 points)
Israel: Noa Kirel - Unicorn (362 points)
PA Media
Mae Muller only picked up 24 points, putting the UK to the bottom of the leaderboard. It was "not the result we hoped for," she tweeted after the show.
"I know I joke a lot but we really put our all into the last few months," she said. "Congrats to all the countries, I'll never forget this journey and I love you all."
Liverpool hosted this year's contest on behalf of war-torn Ukraine, which won in 2022.
Appropriately, the show began with last year's winners, Kalush Orchestra, playing an extended version of their song Stefania in a pre-taped segment from war-torn Kyiv.
Stars including Joss Stone, Sam Ryder and Andrew Lloyd Webber added a British flavour to the song, as the band boarded a train from the iconic Maidan Nezalezhnosti metro station and arrived on the stage of the Liverpool Arena.
Princess Kate accompanied on piano, in a brief segment recorded in the crimson drawing room of Windsor Castle earlier this month.
Alex Bramall
Back in the arena, Kalush performed their new single Changes, delivering a message of defiance to Russia: "Give my all down to the wire / Set me free."
It was the first of many references to the war, in a show that took a more political tone than most editions of Eurovision.
Croatia's Let 3! performed a song that referred to Russia's Vladimir Putin as a "crocodile psychopath", while the Czech band Vesna sang in Ukrainian, "We're with you in our hearts".
Ukraine's own entry, Tvorchi, whose rehearsals at home were interrupted by air raid sirens, played a powerful song inspired by the siege of Mariupol.
They eventually took sixth place, with a total of 243 points.
Russia has been suspended from the contest due to the invasion, but organisers refused to allow a speech from Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelensky during the show.
Sarah Louise Bennett / EBU
Elsewhere, Eurovision was Eurovision. There were 80s-inspired tributes to Miami Vice, a ghost story about Edgar Allen Poe and, naturally, a tear-away dress.
But the musical component of the contest continues to improve.
Spain's Blanca Paloma combined traditional flamenco rhythms with a throbbing electro pulse on the vibrant, urgent EAEA; and France's La Zarra tied together decades of Gallic music history in the Piaf-meets-Daft-Punk Évidemment.
Acts from Armenia, Poland and Israel - especially Israel - threw slick dance breaks into their performances; while Italy's Marco Mengoni was accompanied by two gymnasts on trampolines.
There was also the usual surfeit of tortured ballads, both good (Lithuania) and drab (Albania); and a never-ending parade of lyrics about coming together and being nice to your neighbours (Belgium, Switzerland, Australia).
Finnish rapper Käärijä was the runaway public favourite: He received more than double Loreen's tally in the phone vote. But his chaotic mix of thrash metal, hardcore techno and K-pop melodies failed to impress the juries, who are comprised of music experts.
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In a post-modern twist, the competition was bookended by two songs about the process of songwriting.
Austrian duo Teya & Salena kicked off the show with the quirky pop anthem Who The Hell Is Edgar, in which they are possessed by the spirit of US poet Edgar Allen Poe, who compels them to write a song.
An hour-and-a-half later, Mae Muller closed the competition with I Wrote A Song - in which she gets revenge on her ex-boyfriend by writing a song that catalogues his misdemeanours.
It meant the contest opened with the lyric,"Oh my God, you're such a good writer", and ended with Muller singing, "Instead, I wrote a song".
And if that's not synchronicity, I don't know what is.
Sarah Louise Bennett / EBU
The contest was presented by Alesha Dixon, Hannah Waddingham and Ukrainian singer Julia Sanina, with Graham Norton joining them during the voting stage.
The interval showcased the "Liverpool songbook" with tracks by John Lennon, Melanie C and Gerry and the Pacemakers performed by former Eurovision contestants.
And Sam Ryder, who came second for the UK last year, performed an emotional version of his new single, Mountains, with Queen's Roger Taylor on drums.
Ryder, whose song is about overcoming adversity, was accompanied on stage by dancers who had lost limbs.
How the votes came in
Loreen easily won the jury vote, picking up the maximum 12 points from Ireland, Estonia, Spain, Albania, Cyprus and Ukraine, amongst others.
She ended the jury sequence with a score of 340, giving her a comfortable 163-point lead over Italy's Marco Mengoni.
The public preferred Finnish rapper Käärijä, giving him 526 points, temporarily putting him in the lead.
After a tense pause, Loreen reclaimed the crown at the last minute, receiving a public score of 243 that put her back on top.
The UK languished at the bottom of the table, picking up just nine points from the public and 15 from the juries.
Only Germany fared worse. Their glam-rock song Blood And Glitter gained a mere 18 points.
Commiserations came from the BBC, who organised the contest in partnership with the European Broadcasting Union.
The broadcaster's official Twitter account posted: "Mae, we're so proud of you and everything you've achieved at this year's Eurovision Song Contest."
