ABBA confirm they won’t reunite to celebrate 50th anniversary of Waterloo as Eurovision returns to Sweden

ABBA have denied plans to reunite and celebrate the 50th anniversary of their monumental Eurovision win when the Contest returns to Sweden next year.

Earlier this month, returning champ Loreen once again topped the scoreboard with Tattoo – breaking records in the process as the first female artist to do so twice – meaning the country will host next year’s event.

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Despite reports that the band – starring Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad – could reunite for the event, they’ve denied such plans.

“I don’t want to,” Benny told BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ while marking the one-year anniversary of ‘ABBA Voyage’, “and if I don’t want to, the others won’t. It’s the same for all four of us – someone says, ‘no’ – it’s a no.”

“We can celebrate 50 years of Abba without us being on stage,” added Björn.

Having opened in May 2022, performances of the band’s revolutionary show currently take place exclusively at the ABBA Arena and see digital versions of the group perform with a 10-piece live band.

The venue is purpose built for the show, which offers a 360-degree immersive experience, and speaking in Retro Pop’s August 2022 issue, producer Ludvig Andersson suggests they’re working on creating similar arenas around the world.

“The biggest dream is to stay in London and we build another one somewhere else,” he says. “Where that would be – I’d like to go places that are maybe not the obvious ones. It would be nice to take it to places that aren’t always visited by the big bands.

“The dream would be to have one somewhere in South America, one somewhere in Southeast Asia, one in North America. Who knows? But that’s the plan and we’re working on that already.”