The fifth season of Swedish Idol premiered on 3 September 2008 and continued until its grand finale on 12 December, when 22-year-old Kevin Borg was crowned winner. It was the first season to feature new judges Laila Bagge, Anders Bagge and Andreas Carlsson, a move that made it the first Idol series in the world to completely replace its judging panel. The series took advantage of guest judges including Charlotte Perrelli, Desmond Child and Cyndi Lauper, and the final 3 results show featured a performance by Leona Lewis, who sang "Forgive Me". For the second year running, the grand finale was held in Stockholm's Globen Arena with a live audience of 16,000 people, where operatic group Il Divo also sang live. Season 5 of Swedish Idol marked only the second time in worldwide Idol history where neither of the final two contestants were born in the show's home country. Winner Kevin Borg was born in Malta and runner-up Alice Svensson was born in Vietnam. The only other Idol contest to have this occur was Greece's Super Idol in 2004.

Kevin James Borg, is a Maltese pop singer who lives and works in Sweden. Borg rose to fame as the winner of the fifth series of the Swedish television singing competition Idol in 2008. He was the third male winner and the first in the show's history to be born outside of Sweden, having moved there exactly one year before he was declared winner.