With the Eurovision Song Contest already enjoying enormous popularity in Greece, Helena Paparizou's victory in 2005 created the perfect circumstances to organise the show. Under the Greek sun, the 2006 contest took place in Athens! Carola, who won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden in 1991 and finished third in 1983, returned to the contest with her song Invincible, was widely tipped to do well. Another hotly tipped winner was Russian singer Dima Bilan with his song Never Let You Go. German group Texas Lightning did well in at the bookmakers with their refreshing pop-country song No No Never, but the song only managed a disappointing 14th place. Anna Vissi, the Greek pop queen who had already participated in the song contest in 1980 and 1982, had high hopes to win the competition with her dramatic performance of Everything.
Not many experts expected the masked hardrockers Lordi to win the trophy. With their Hard Rock Hallelujah and their performance filled with spectacular pyrotechnical effects, the Finns managed to win the contest with 292 points, the highest amount of points ever achieved at that time. Lordi went on to have lots of success with their song which made the top 10 in dozens of European charts.
In order to save time only the points 8, 10 and 12 were read out by the national spokespersons. Points 1 to 7 were automatically added to the scoreboard. Nana Mouskouri, who represented Luxembourg in the 1963 contest, appeared on-stage during the Grand Final. The slogan in 2006 was Feel The Rhythm.
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