For the second time since 1957, the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Germany, this time in the Bavarian capital, Munich. The presenter of this year's song contest was Marlene Charell who presented the performers in three languages, German, French and English, but she was very nervous and made 13 mistakes in the voting alone. She also mixed up the names of the performers and the conductors much to the displease of the artists. Due to the trilingual presentation, the contest lasted more than 3 hours for the first time ever. The total number of participants rose to 20 again as Italy, France and Greece returned. The 1983 Eurovision Song Contest didn't have filmed postcards to present the artists as they were not ready in time. The set was quite small but unique as the stage was arc-shaped surrounding the orchestra section.

This year marked the first performance of Sweden's Carola Häggkvist who reached the third place and went on to win the contest in 1991 and represented her country again in 2006,coming fifth. Her song Främling became very popular in Sweden, perhaps even more than her winning song from 1991. For France's Guy Bonnet, it was the second time he represented his native country. After coming 4th in 1970, he ended up 6th in the Munich contest. Italian superstar Riccardo Fogli, the 1983 contest ended with a disappointment: after winning the prestigious San Remo festival the year before, he only ended up 11th with his song Per Lucia.

Luxembourg won the 1983 contest with the dramatic presentation of Si La Vie Est Cadeau by French singer Corinne Hermès which marked the country's last victory to date. Unfortunately, Corinne's winning song didn't set the European charts alight and it was even outscored by the Swedish entry Främling and even the Yugoslav song by Daniel who recorded his song in English, called Julie then.