How Malta’s Aidan became Eurovision’s most compelling underdog
On a sunny afternoon in Valletta last year, a young man sat alone on a rooftop, headphones in, listening to a song he had just written. By the time the chorus arrived, he was crying. He took a photograph of himself and sent it to his mother. The message read: “I guess I have the song.” The young man was Aidan, Malta’s representative in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026. The song was “Bella”. And that photograph, taken on a rooftop in Malta’s ancient walled capital, marked the end of a search that had consumed him for the better part of a decade. Aidan is not, in the traditional sense, a Eurovision newcomer. He has been entering Malta’s national selection for years, with the tenacity of someone who can’t quite convince himself to stop. Since 2021, every single he has released has charted at number one or number two back home. This domestic success was never really in question. But Eurovision, the contest he has followed obsessively since childhood, kept slipping just out of reach. ‘Bella’ …
