Abor & Tynna

A conservatoire upbringing they walked away from

Attila Bornemisza was born in Vienna on 27 August 1998; his sister Tünde followed on 22 December 2000. The family has Hungarian and Romanian roots, and the household was a working musician's: their father Csaba has played cello in the Vienna Philharmonic since 1993. Attila was put on cello, Tünde on flute, and she took first prizes in Austrian state and national competitions before she was out of her teens.

That training is audible in the arrangements rather than the instrumentation. Nothing on the duo's records sounds classical, but the harmonic turns are tidier than the genre usually bothers with, and Tynna's phrasing has the breath control of someone who spent years on a wind instrument. The pair now split their time between Vienna and Berlin.

SoundCloud, a Facebook share, and a Eurovision offer turned down

They began recording together in 2016 and put their first track on SoundCloud. It was shared on Facebook, a producer found it there, and the hobby became a contract. Releases trickled out across the late 2010s and early 2020s without breaking anything open.

An approach about Eurovision came around 2020 and they said no, reasoning that they were not ready. The second approach came from their own label, which pushed them towards Germany's 2025 selection. More than 3,000 acts applied to Chefsache ESC 2025, the Stefan Raab-led process that replaced the broadcaster's previous format. Abor & Tynna came through it and won the televoting superfinal on 1 March 2025 with 34.9 per cent, which is how an Austrian duo ended up representing Germany.

Bittersüß and the single that outgrew it

The groundwork was already laid. On 24 January 2025 they released a double A-side, Songs gehasst and Baller, through Jive Records; the debut album Bittersüß, 16 tracks, arrived on 14 February 2025 and reached number 10 in Germany, 17 in Austria and 100 in Switzerland. Baller was written and produced by the siblings with Alexander Hauer — a distorted four-to-the-floor base, a hip-hop cadence in the verses, and Tynna's husky delivery over the top. Raab described it as a modern German pop song with something of Udo Lindenberg about it. It was the first German-language entry Germany had sent since 2007.

The run-up was not clean. Laryngitis forced Tynna out of the London Eurovision Party, reduced the Amsterdam pre-party to a backing-track performance, and on 19 April 2025 the duo pulled out of Madrid's PrePartyES, announcing on Instagram that her voice needed more time. She recovered in time for Basel.

In the grand final on 17 May 2025 they finished 15th with 151 points — 77 from the juries, including maximum scores from Czechia and Ukraine, and 74 from the public. The song travelled further than the result suggests: number one in Lithuania and Latvia, top five in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg, number nine in Finland, number ten in Poland, and number 34 in the United Kingdom, with Gold certifications in Austria and Switzerland. A Hungarian acoustic version, Lángra gyújtom az eget, appeared on 25 April 2025, a nowifi remix on 8 May, a 25-track deluxe edition of the album on 16 May, and an English edit on 6 June.

The year since: a deliberate step sideways

Rather than chase the Eurovision circuit, they went back to rooms. Festival slots filled the summer of 2025, including the SWR3 New Pop Festival in September, and the Bittersüß club tour opened in Frankfurt on 28 September 2025, taking in Hamburg, Cologne on 2 October, Vienna's Flex on 4 October, Munich, Linz, Leipzig and Stuttgart before finishing in Zurich on 12 October. Hamburg sold out and was moved up to the larger Grünspan. A Warsaw date at Klub Proxima followed on 21 October 2025.

Awards recognition has been partial. They were nominated as Best Newcomer Act at the 1Live Krone in November 2025 without winning, and took Newcomer of the Year at the YouTube Music Awards Germany 2025.

The clearest signal of intent came on 15 January 2026, when they played Eurosonic Noorderslag's 40th edition at Huize Maas in Groningen, a 40-minute showcase slot from 20:10 — a tastemaker booking aimed at promoters and agents rather than at a Eurovision audience. Eurovision work has continued alongside it: a guest appearance on Das Deutsche Finale 2026 from Berlin on 28 February 2026, Eurovision in Concert in Amsterdam on 11 April 2026, and a set at EuroClub in Vienna during contest week, 11 to 16 May 2026, confirmed in the line-up announced on 3 May. Summer 2026 brought Campus Festival Konstanz in late May and FM4 Frequency in St Pölten in August.

The gap in the discography

The one thing missing is new music. Release databases show nothing from the duo since the English edit of Baller on 6 June 2025 — no second album, no standalone single, no announced record. Everything they have played across 2026 has been drawn from Bittersüß and its deluxe edition.

That makes the current position a holding pattern rather than a campaign: a catalogue of one album, a hit that is now nearly two years old, and a live reputation built faster than the recorded output behind it. Anyone booking them in late 2026 is booking the Bittersüß material.

On stage: scaffolding, a podium and no band

The Cologne show at Carlswerk Victoria on 2 October 2025 ran past 100 minutes and 24 songs. Luca Noel opened with a 30-minute set accompanied by a guitarist. The staging was industrial scaffolding with a raised DJ booth where Abor handled the production, and a central podium for Tynna facing into the room. Two large screens and smaller panels built into the frame carried the visuals. There were no backing vocalists, no dancers and no live instrumentalists — two people and a rig.

Reviewers took it as evidence of growth since Basel. The Cologne notice said Tynna sounded healthy and in top form, a pointed observation given the spring's vocal trouble, and credited the pair with real confidence on a stage that size. Its single complaint was that Baller, saved for the end, could have been given a longer arrangement to land properly.

The Hamburg Grünspan show covered roughly 25 songs and included Parallele Linien, Babylon, Bang Bang, Winnetou, Katana and Baller, with a staged fight during Katana and a game-show skit built around Wer wird Millionär?. Production props stayed cheap and effective: light sabres, bubble guns, a disco ball. Tynna sang parts of the set from inside the crowd and spent time between songs noting how civil the room was. Support came from Paula Engels, which one attendee found muddled. The audience skewed 18 to 35 and sang most of the set back.