The Contest returned to Ireland for the 4th time in five years and made its third trip to the Point Theatre. This time round children's television presenter Carrie Crowley was chosen to present the show alongside popular singer Ronan Keating from Boyzone (who also performed in the interval act).
The United Kingdom ended a 16 year drought when Katrina & The Waves achieved victory for the British with the song 'Love Shine A Light'. At 227 points, it was as of release the highest score ever achieved for a winning song in the contest, 70 points clear of Ireland who came in second. It remains and will forever remain being the highest scored song from the age when the contest was being held in a single night.
This was to be the final year that the winning song was chosen majorly by national juries. Televoting was used for the first time by five countries (United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria) on an experimental basis and proved so successful it was used to replaced most juries the following year. As such, for the first time ever, a recap with brief fragments of all the competing songs was shown after the performances, to show the phone numbers in these countries.
Several former participants filmed 30 second films which were shown throughout the contest. Those artists included Céline Dion, Benny and Bjorn from Abba, Cheryl and Mike from Bucks Fizz, Julio Iglesias, Cliff Richard, Niamh Kavanagh, Johnny Logan, Linda Martin, Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan, Sandra Kim, Hanne Krogh and Elisabeth Andreassen from Bobbysocks, Fionnuala Sherry and Rolf Løvland from Secret Garden and the reigning champion Eimear Quinn.
Italy made a return to the contest having not competed since 1993. The San Remo Festival winners Jalisse performed Fiumi Di Parole into a very respectable 4th place. Italy would then withdraw from the contest and would be absent for 15 years until they returned in 2011.