Fresh from treading the turquoise carpet at Eurovision, SBS broadcast host Courtney Act has set her sights on a new challenge – representing Australia in the world’s biggest music event.
The gregarious drag queen with a penchant for sequins and sparkles headlined SBS’s coverage alongside Voyager frontman Danny Estrin. She says she would love to fly the flag for Australia on the global stage.
Speaking to The Weekly at Eurovision in host city Vienna, Courtney Act (Shane Jenek) said she had her hopes pinned on hosting the world broadcast next year if Delta Goodrem won the competition. The winning country gets hosting rights. However, with Delta finishing a very respectable fourth, Courtney now has her eyes on the top prize.
“It’s just so exciting because I’ve been taking notes and studying and learning and understanding, and I’d absolutely hope to be able to craft a song worthy of Eurovision one day in the not-too-distant future,” Courtney said. “You know, my biological clock is ticking.”
Courtney, 44, narrowly missed out on a Eurovision berth in 2019 when she finished fourth in a televised pre-contest event, Eurovision – Australia Decides. Kate Miller-Heidke won and went on to compete at Eurovision in Tel Aviv, placing ninth. SBS has since abandoned the public selection contest and chooses an Australian representative internally.
Seven years on, Act has the feathers in her fascinator to seize the microphone on the world’s biggest music stage, having co-hosted SBS’s broadcast twice (alongside Tony Armstrong in 2025) and been a backstage correspondent in 2024.
Courtney Act shot to stardom in the inaugural season of Australian Idol in 2003, and went on to release a debut single, ‘Rub Me Wrong’, before coming joint runner-up in RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2014 and later winning Celebrity Big Brother UK in 2018.
“When I entered the national selection in 2019, Australia Decides, I hadn’t been to Eurovision, and I was imagining what someone who performed at Eurovision might sing,” Act said.
“But now that I’ve been here and I’ve got such an intimate knowledge of about 75 different acts over the last three years, and I’ve been in the arena and I felt the emotion and I’ve seen how different elements respond – and I think about all of those elements and the things that I do well – I feel that I would be able to craft them into something that would be more authentically me and more authentically Eurovision.”
Courtney, a shining ambassador for the LGBTIQA+ community and gender fluidity, enraptured audiences with her glittering costumes and cheeky behind-the-scenes interviews with Eurovision contestants. But regardless of her own ambitions, she genuinely wanted Delta Goodrem to win, describing the multi-platinum artist as “glorious and so beautiful”.
“Her performance is effortless. There’s a joy, there’s a smile, and there’s an ease that you don’t see on the faces of any other contestant.”
Eurovision 2027 will be held in Bulgaria, in keeping with tradition, after Bulgarian singer Dara (Darina Yotova) took out the contest with her energetic dance track ‘Bangaranga’. Time will tell if Courtney makes her fourth consecutive appearance at the song contest – as host or performer. Either way, her affection for Eurovision is clear.
“This is a huge event, like the biggest live music event in the world, and it’s watched by hundreds of millions of people. I believe it’s bigger than the Super Bowl,” Courtney said.
“People love the Super Bowl… and this is basically 25 halftime shows with no football, so it feels like a perfect version of the Super Bowl to me. And it’s kind of fun, like as a host, that you get to create relationships… You get to interact with all of these artists, you get to know them over the course of a week or two, and there’s something really special about that.”
The Eurovision Song Contest 2026 can be streamed on SBS Demand.
