Turkey made its first entry in the contest, and France and Malta returned after a one- and two-year absence, respectively.

The winner was the Netherlands with the song "Ding-a-dong", composed by Dick Bakker, written by Will Luikinga [nl] and Eddy Ouwens, and performed by the group Teach-In.

The United Kingdom, Italy, France and Luxembourg rounded out the top five positions, with the UK achieving a record-extending ninth second-place finish.

[2][3] The Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) had initially been reluctant to stage the event, mainly due to the high costs that came with it which would have been placed on the organisation.

There had also been considerable pressure and disquiet from left-wing groups in the country that initially opposed the amount of money being spent by the public broadcaster on a commercial event, which subsequently developed into a wider protest against the general commercialisation of music in Sweden;[2][4] this led to street protests and a counter-festival, Alternativfestivalen [sv] ('the Alternative Festival'), being held during the week of Eurovision 1975.

[6][7][9] Ellen Nikolaysen competed in the contest for a second time, having previously participated for Norway in 1973 as a member of the Bendik Singers.

The threat to the contest did not ultimately materialise, however one month after the event the RAF targeted the West German embassy in Stockholm.

Based on the above ideas, the UK's BBC proposed the 12, 10 and 8–1 pattern which was later adopted for this contest, and which had been used in all subsequent editions as of 2024[update].

Each jury member awarded all songs a score between one and five immediately after they had been performed, with no abstentions allowed and without voting for the country they represented.

[31][33] The medallions awarded to the winning songwriters were presented by the Secretary-General of the European Broadcasting Union Henrik Hahr [sv].

[31][33] The winner was the Netherlands represented by the song "Ding-a-dong", composed by Bakker, written by Will Luikinga [nl] and Eddy Ouwens, and performed by Teach-In.

[2][27] The UK came second for a record-extending ninth time, and Malta, which had come last in its two previous contest appearances, achieved their best result to date with a twelfth-place finish.

[37] Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson, connected to the contest venue via telephone lines and responsible for announcing, in English or French, the votes for its respective country.

Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers.

[20] In addition to the participating nations, the contest was also reportedly aired, live or deferred, by broadcasters in Eastern European countries via Intervision, and in Australia, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Japan, Jordan, Morocco and South Korea.