It’s just 24 hours to go before the most eccentric national final of the year, the Sanremo Music Festival, opens its doors for the 75^th time. This show is to Italian music what the Oscars is to Hollywood film, and Eurovision is to European gays, and in its 74-year history, it’s produced some international smash hits, broken out many new artists and given confused non-Italians hours of hilarious entertainment over the course of its five four-plus-hour-long marathon shows.

Here are just five of the most memorable shocking moments throughout the years, from the good to the bad and the downright barmy. Let’s hope 2025 adds to the long list of Sanremo thrills, spills and broken heels, as 29 artists vie for eternal glory and (probably) Italy’s ticket to Basel in May.

The Fake Pregnancy (1986)

Sanremo is a haven for Italy’s big fashion brands who fork out huge sponsorship deals to show off the most iconic of looks, and one of the biggest style icons is undoubtedly Italy’s favourite blue hag rock queen Loredana Bertè. She’s competed at the festival a whopping 12 times, most recently last year with her anthem Pazza.

However, in 1986, two years before marrying Swedish tennis player Björn Borg, the man she sought revenge on last year, she shocked the nation when she arrived on-stage at the Ariston to perform her song Ré in a mini leather jumpsuit, complete with a fake baby bump fitted underneath, wide studded shoulders and Texan-style ankle boots, a look her dancers were also sporting. This was just about scandalous enough to cause a national outcry in the Catholic nation of Italy, and she lost her record contract as a result. In a recent Instagram post, Bertè defended the look, saying: “I wanted to show that a woman, when she is pregnant, is not sick but is even stronger!”

The Placebo Effect (2001)

Sanremo is a huge deal in Italy, with each of the five nights getting between 10 and 15 million viewers every year. This has made it an ideal showcase for international stars, with the show hosting such global household names as Cher, Louis Armstrong, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Lopez, Ray Charles and the Black Eyed Peas in the past. British 80s stars Duran Duran are due to perform in 2025, so do let your parents know.

One year of particular controversy concerning international stars was 2001. In one notable incident, host Raffaella Carrà was forced to defend the presence of Eminem, whose lyrics were deemed too offensive for a family audience. If only she’d known about the performance that was to be given by British alt rock band Placebo, who, not content with the preparations for their performance of Special K, caused carnage when lead singer Brian Molko smashed his guitar on a speaker, flipped off the audience and took a knowing bow, accompanied by endless jeers and a stunned Carrà. Let’s hope we never see a tantrum like that again…

The Prince and the Public (2010)

Without Eurovision to anchor the Sanremo festival, one could argue that the show lost its way a bit throughout the 2000s, absorbed by new-fangled talent show sensibilities and generally not attracting the cream of Italian music to the party. This was starkly obvious by 2010, when an actual member of nobility made it onto the shortlist of big artists. Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, Prince of Venice, who’d been making a name for himself on reality TV, joined with Pupo and tenor Luca Canonici for the patriotic dirge Italia amore mio (“Italy, my love”), despite the fact he could barely sing.

The song was actually knocked out by the demoscopic jury on the first night, but was brought back in on night 3 when the public had a say (and you thought Eurovision’s voting system was complicated). This would be a theme that would carry through to the final night – Sanremo is used to audience rebellions over just about anything, but, when it was announced that fan favourites Noemi and Malika Ayane hadn’t made the Top 3, and the Italia boys had, the orchestra, who had a portion of the vote allocated to them, threw their sheet music in the air and yelled their discontent at host Antonella Clerici. Artistic director Gianmarco Mazzi quickly took to the stage in protest, asking for the split vote to be made public to confirm the disparity in the televote, and indeed, there would later be allegations of vote-rigging from buying out call centres. To this day, the full result hasn’t been released, making Sanremo 2010 Italy’s Eurovision 2013.

In the end, Valerio Scanu beat the trio into second, but it was so clear how much this incident had tarnished the festival’s credentials that, to this day, the public vote is worth no more than a third of the result on the last night.

The Runner (2020)

Every Italian remembers where they were when this moment happened – the moment that caused the phrase “Dov’è Bugo?” to trend No.1 worldwide, even with non-Italian speakers.

In 2020, veteran singers Bugo and Morgan teamed up to perform the song Sincero, an honest electro-rock ballad about two creatives who hate each other but have to set aside their differences. This couldn’t have been better foreshadowing for what was to come – the song was in dead last place after the first 3 nights, and the two artists’ reluctant friendship was deteriorating fast.

This reached a crescendo on night 4, when Morgan changed the lyrics of the first verse to, essentially, call his partner ungrateful, rude, arrogant and the whole reason they’d flopped so far. To the strange bemusement of hosts Amadeus and Fiorello, Bugo wasn’t too happy about this, and stormed off the stage before the second verse kicked in, which led to about 10 minutes of padding, involving the hosts and Morgan fruitlessly shouting “BUGO!” down the corridor whilst trying to reassure the crowd. The pair were disqualified for failing to perform.

Although heated, the moment would go on to be remembered fondly, as one of the last that united the nation of Italy before it suffered one of the worst waves of a new virus known as Covid-19 three weeks later.

The Rose Massacre (2023)

Just when we thought we’d seen the worst tantrums on the Sanremo stage, this moment from 2023 topped them all. On night 1, reigning co-champion Blanco returned to the Ariston for a triumphant performance of his new solo single L’Isola delle rose (“The Island of the Roses”). However, when it became clear his in-ear wasn’t working, and wouldn’t be fixed quickly, rather than asking for a redo, Blanco did as any bad boy pop star would and took out his juvenile anger on the stage hands.

Blanco began kicking the rose displays that had been placed around him and his band, and then Bedlam ensued, as he started picking up the cardboard palates and chucking them on the floor, as well as jumping on his band mates, headed by songwriter Michele Zocca, aka Michelangelo, and generally making a fool of himself. He ended with a shrug as the accompaniment faded out and the jeers of the confused, angry crowd became apparent, the stage now resembling a literal Carrie-esque bloodbath.

To what extent this moment was a staged publicity stunt to market Blanco’s tearaway image is unknown, but it did give us the brilliant moment when Super Grandad and co-host Gianni Morandi offered to assist in the clean-up. Also, given Blanco and Michelangelo have written 3 of the songs at the 2025 festival, including that of pre-race favourite Giorgia, there is reason to believe it might have been. Probably best fence off the Artiston flowerbeds just to be on the safe side, though.

So, with all that in mind…who are you most looking forward to seeing at Sanremo 2025? Who knows what madness lurks down the steps of the Ariston? Remember to follow ESCBubble across social media for exclusive Eurovision news, reviews, interviews, polls and more!