Portugal's Salvador Sobral won the Eurovision Song Contest last night performing a jazz-style ballad written by his sister, taking the top spot for the first time in the country's history and celebrating with a call to "put emotion back into music".
Meanwhile, figures issued just after the curtain came down on the final showed that in the semi-final on Thursday Malta placed in 16th place from 18 songs. Ten qualified for the final.
Malta, represented by Claudia Faniello with the song Breathlessly, was the only country not to get any points from televoting, but was eighth in voting among the national juries with 55 points.
Along with singers from Italy and Bulgaria, Sobral was a favourite going into the final of the annual song fest, which was hosted in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, and he led the voting throughout the evening. Portugal finished ahead of Bulgaria and Moldova.
A soft-spoken, 27 year-old with a scraggly beard, Sobral won with "Amar Pelos Dois" ("Love For Both of Us"), sung in his native Portuguese. This is the first time Portugal won since it first entered the contest in 1964. After being announced as the winner, Sobral performed the ballad again, this time in duet with his sister Luisa.
"Music is not fireworks, music is feeling," he said after winning. "Let's put emotion back into music."
Asked later at a press conference whether he was now a national hero, he said: "Honestly man I just want to live a peaceful life, if I thought of myself as a national hero it would be a bit weird, you know."
Ukraine hosted the competition while it also fights a war, hundreds of kilometres (miles) away in the east, against Russian-backed separatists.
This was the 62nd edition of Eurovision, recognised by Guinness World Records as the longest-running annual TV music competition. It began in 1956 with just seven countries. Ireland have won most often - seven times in all - following by Sweden.
Sobral came into the competition having told local media that he has a heart problem, without giving details. In the run-up he wore a sweatshirt drawing attention to the migrant crisis in Europe, but was asked to stop wearing it by the organizers.
"I hope this can bring a change not only to this contest, but to music in general, and pop music," Sobral said about his win, contrasting his song to music normally pumped out "16 times a day" on radio stations.
Other hopefuls this year included Italian Francesco Gabbani. He was tipped to win with a number, viewed nearly 114 million times on YouTube, that mixes Buddhist imagery with a dancing ape, and that he explained as poking fun at the West's superficial embrace of eastern culture.
Jacques Houdek, known as 'Mr Voice' in Croatia, blended pop and operatic singing styles in the song "My Friend". Romania fielded a duo that combined rap and yodelling.
Ukraine has won the competition twice, including last year with a song about the mass deportation of Tatars from Crimea by Josef Stalin, and its winners performed on Saturday.
Moscow fielded a candidate this year who had violated Ukrainian law by performing in Crimea after the Russian takeover. Kiev accused Moscow of deliberately provoking a row.
Russian singer Yulia Samoylova performed in Crimea again on Tuesday, coinciding with the first Eurovision semi-final.
"I think politics shouldn't intervene," said Liza Ignatieva, a 21-year-old university student in Moscow. "But they broke the rules of the event by not letting her in. Why they invented new rules for Russia only? Yes, we have bad relations but they shouldn't do it to us."