ESC Finalists Kalush Orchestra drop digital artwork for charity

Kalush Orchestra, the Ukranian band and winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, has dropped a 3D model of the bandleader’s iconic pink bucket hat on the back of their opening performance of their smash hit ‘Stefania’ at the ESC in Liverpool. The digital artwork will be for sale for only 72 hours, with Kalush Orchestra and Sony Music donating net proceeds to charity. 

The digital artwork was developed in collaboration with global music partners Sony Music Entertainment/Columbia Germany and is named after Kalush Orchestra’s smash hit ‘Stefania’. In the NFT, the song accompanies an image of Oleh Psiuk’s hat surrounded by traditional Ukrainian ornaments. Danil Ulanov, a Ukrainian artist, born in 2000 in the city of Dnipro, designed the piece. The piece is available on the digital art marketplace Makers Place. As of today, it will be for grabs at 09am ET, 3pm CET for only 72 hours for the price of 99 USD/ piece. The net proceeds from Kalush Orchestra and Sony Music will be donated to charity.

Kalush Orchestra were representing their home country Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Turin, Italy. Through the iconic performance of their song ‘Stefania’, Kalush Orchestra became the face and the voice of a nation currently undergoing excruciating times.

Since winning last year’s Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Stefania’, the song’s video has been viewed more than 54 million times on YouTube. 330,000 videos were recorded for the track on TikTok and it has recorded 52 million audio streams. Within the past year Kalush Orchestra have toured the US, playing 18 shows in just 3 weeks. They also released several songs, such as ‘In The Shadows’ with Finnish band The Rasmus and their first English song ‘Changes’, or ‘Ushme Uturbe’, a joint track with the Canadian artist bbno$.

“Pink panama from the Kalush Orchestra band is actively sold at auctions all over the world. We haven’t counted, but we have requests almost every week for a panama that is being asked for a charity raffle or auction. We are glad that the symbol of our band and our victory at Eurovision 2022 has now also turned into digital art. We believe that, in this form, our pink panama will help raise even more funds to help Ukrainians affected by the war,” said leader of the Kalush Orchestra, Oleh Psiuk.

The ESC is an international song competition organized annually by the European Broadcast Union, featuring participants representing European countries, with each participating country submitting an original song to be performed on live television and radio.