After months of speculation and many names rumored to be tipped to be locked in to host the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, RAI made the official announcement tonight during the Second Evening of the Sanremo Festival.

Before the big announcement, Laura Pausini sang her own song “Scatola” to the audience in the Ariston Theatre and was then interviewed by Amadeus. She was then joined by Mika for a duet of “I Have a Dream”, and then Cattelan joined them from the orchestra pit playing the trombone, triangle, and electric guitar!

The Eurovision 2022 Hosts

Alessandro Cattelan is 41 years old and has plenty of hosting experience in music and comedy shows in Italian and English. He has also recently taken a job at RAI, so it would seem that hosting Eurovision was going to be his job to lose. He has even gone on record saying that he would be honoured to host the Contest.

Laura Pausini is a multi award-winning singer, fluent in English, Italian, and Spanish, and will turn 48 just after the Contest ends in Turin. She also has experience presenting when she hosted her own TV show. In 2018, she co-hosted the Lo Nuestro Awards Gala, a Spanish-language awards show that honours Latin music. Multi talented and multi lingual Laura is definitely up for the challenge of hosting Eurovision.

Mika is a 38 year-old Lebanese-born British singer-songwriter fluent in English, French, Italian, and Arabic. He has topped the UK singles charts and has won awards. On TV, he has served as a judge and mentor on The Voice France and Italy’s X Factor. He even starred in his own variety show in Italy called Stasera Casa Mika, which he won an award for.