In a world that feels perpetually unsteady, Belgium arrives at the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna with an entry that transforms instability into art. ESSYLA's "Dancing on the Ice" — confirmed on 19 February 2026 by French-speaking public broadcaster RTBF — is a sophisticated electro-pop anthem that dares its audience to keep moving, keep dreaming, and keep dancing, even when the ice beneath their feet might crack. It is one of 2026's most thematically precise Eurovision entries, and the most musically layered Belgium has offered in years.

The Artist: ESSYLA

The name itself is a clue. ESSYLA — her real first name, Alice, spelled backwards — belongs to Alice Van Eesbeeck, a 29-year-old from Perwez, a quiet town in Walloon Brabant, whose artistic persona crackles with the energy of someone who has spent years dismantling and reassembling the sounds she grew up with. The inversion is intentional: this is an artist who has always preferred the less obvious angle.

ESSYLA's musical formation is rooted in the grand tradition of French chanson, but her appetite quickly expanded outward. As the official Eurovision.com profile confirms, she fell in love with the American legends of jazz, folk, rock, and funk, developing a restless eclecticism that would become her artistic signature. To sharpen her technique, she enrolled at IMEP in Namur — the Institut de Musique et des Arts de la Scène — one of Belgium's leading performing arts academies, where she refined both her vocal instrument and her sense of artistic identity.

The Belgian public first encountered ESSYLA during the ninth season of The Voice Belgique, the French-speaking talent competition. Placed in the team of acclaimed singer Typh Barrow, she reached the programme's final — a result that, in retrospect, carries a remarkable footnote. As the joint RTBF–VRT broadcaster announcement confirms, she shared that final with one Jérémie Makiese — who would go on to represent Belgium at Eurovision 2022. Two of Belgium's most recent Eurovision-adjacent artists crossed paths before either of them had set foot in a Eurovision arena.

In the years following The Voice, ESSYLA built her career patiently: first as a backing vocalist for other artists, then as a solo act in her own right. Her early singles "Let You Go" and "Not My Kind of Dude" were both embraced by Belgian radio, and her debut EP "I'll Be Okay" established her as a genuinely distinctive presence in the Francophone pop landscape. As The Brussels Times reports, her style is one of "confident, colourful, pop, modern and unique" character — eclectic funky and groove influences wrapped in an instantly recognisable aesthetic. In her lyrics, she gives voice to the concerns of a young woman of her time, with female empowerment as a constant thread.

She also carries an under-the-radar piece of Eurovision history: in 2019, ESSYLA competed in the Eurovision Choir Contest in Gothenburg, Sweden, as a member of the choir Almakalia. Belgium did not advance to the final of that competition, but the experience gave her an early, formative encounter with the Eurovision universe she would one day re-enter as a solo artist.

The Song: Dancing on the Ice

"Dancing on the Ice" was never going to be a conventional motivational anthem. Where a lesser song might reach for uplift by papering over difficulty, ESSYLA's entry looks at fragility directly — then chooses to dance anyway. As the official EBU story details, the track functions as a message of hope and an anthem to the determination of youth: a generation that chooses to keep moving forward, to keep dreaming, to keep dancing on the ice, despite its fragility, and despite everything that can crack or break in today's world.

The song's origins lie in a songwriting camp organised by SABAM, Belgium's music authors' rights organisation, which brought together emerging talent from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. From that concentrated creative environment came a collaboration between ESSYLA, co-composer and artistic producer Nicolas D'Avell, and fellow composer Emil Stengele, with co-lyrics by Barbara Petitjean. The result, as the official broadcaster documentation confirms, inhabits ESSYLA's "refined electro-pop universe" — its lyrics cryptic and fragmented in their poetry, but emotionally immediate in their impact.

Musically, D'Avell's production does not settle for one identity. The most striking singular element is a distinctive Arabic musical motif woven into the arrangement, lending the song an unexpected intercultural depth that sets it far apart from the European pop mainstream. Hope, the production quietly insists, does not carry a single accent or origin. ESSYLA's vocal approach amplifies this sophistication at every turn: she performs all of her own backing harmonies, and the soaring lyrical outbursts throughout the track function as points of emotional rupture — moments where control gives way to something larger and more urgent.

The Road to Vienna

Belgium's path to the 70th Eurovision Song Contest was, characteristically, quiet. As VRT NWS reports, RTBF — the French-speaking public broadcaster — held the 2026 mandate to represent Belgium, in line with its long-standing alternating arrangement with the Flemish broadcaster VRT. In keeping with RTBF tradition, no televised national selection show was held; the process took place entirely behind the scenes, with the broadcaster making its choice on artistic and strategic merit alone.

The announcement came on the morning of Thursday, 19 February 2026, when listeners of the radio programme "8-9" on La Une and VivaCité became the first to learn that ESSYLA would represent Belgium in Vienna. The official music video was simultaneously premiered on the Eurovision Song Contest YouTube channel. In a statement captured in the official RTBF–VRT press release, ESSYLA expressed undisguised joy: "I can't wait to leave for Austria... it's approaching fast! It's an incredible adventure, a dream I have pursued since childhood. And today I can say without hesitation: I have never been this happy."

The significance of the selection is layered. As the official EBU announcement notes, 2026 marks 70 years since Belgium debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest — the country is one of just seven founding nations to have competed at the very first edition in 1956. Yet Belgium's sole contest victory, Sandra Kim's beloved "J'aime la vie", dates all the way back to 1986. Four decades on from that triumph, a new generation arrives in Vienna: ESSYLA is the first solo female artist to represent Belgium at Eurovision this decade, ending a run of four consecutive solo male representatives.

Belgium will compete in Semi-Final 1 on 12 May, where ESSYLA will need to qualify for the Grand Final on Saturday, 16 May.

Technical Analysis

ESSYLA's vocal profile is exceptional. The official broadcaster documentation describes a voice that is "powerful and infinitely modular" — phrasing that accurately captures a singer capable of moving between restrained, intimate verses and soaring soprano-register outbursts within the span of a single phrase. Her commitment to performing all of her own backing harmonies is significant: it means the layered vocal architecture of "Dancing on the Ice" is entirely her own instrument, stacked and woven rather than delegated. Replicating that wall of sound live in a Vienna arena will require impeccable breath control and careful in-ear monitoring — challenges that her conservatoire-level training and touring experience make her well-equipped to meet.

Nicolas D'Avell's production framework offers real staging flexibility. The electro-pop foundation and driving rhythmic momentum make the song a natural candidate for choreography-led visual direction, while the Arabic tonal element in the arrangement demands precision in live sound design to ensure its impact survives the cavernous acoustics of a competition arena. The song's emotional arc — controlled tension in the verses building toward cathartic release — is expertly structured for a competition setting, where three minutes must deliver a complete and compelling journey.

Belgium has historically outperformed its public televote score among professional juries, a pattern noted by VRT NWS. Given the musical sophistication and lyrical density of "Dancing on the Ice", ESSYLA is well-positioned to collect strong jury points if the staging delivers on the track's ambition. This is an entry built for attentive listeners — and it has both the substance and the spectacle to dance its way to the Grand Final.