Barbara Dex Award


The Barbara Dex Award is an annually awarded, fan-voted accolade for the "worst dressed" artists in the Eurovision Song Contest. It was created by Edwin van Thillo and Rob Paardekam, the founders of Dutch Eurovision fansite The House of Eurovision, in 1997. It was named after Belgian singer Barbara Dex, who represented Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 1993 wearing a self-made, semi-transparent dress. According to William Lee Adams of Wiwibloggs, Dex wearing her own costume had her ending up "looking like a lampshade", a feature that eventually led to the award's inception. Debbie Scerri, representing Malta in the 1997 edition of the contest, was the first artist to receive the Barbara Dex Award. For the third edition of the award in 1999, The House of Eurovision opted to open to up for a public user vote, unlike the internal selection from the previous two years.
In a January 2006 interview between Dex and ESCToday staff writer Sietse Bakker, Dex stated that there was "nothing wrong" with the Barbara Dex Award. In July 2015, Wiwibloggs held a poll on the "worst dressed Barbara Dex Award winner", which was won by Guildo Horn, Germany's 1998 Eurovision act. The House of Eurovision shut down in 2016 and the Barbara Dex Award's operations were transferred to Belgian website Songfestival.be and its founder, Jasper Van Biesen. Van Biesen stated that he hoped the ownership transition to broaden the award's reach.

Award winners

By country