It's time. The Vienna's City hall aka Wiener Rathaus will host the ceremony on Monday January 12, 2026 at 7pm CET hosted by You can watch it live right here.
As usual there will be three rounds of voting. First the Big4 (only 4 as Spain withdraw) and host country Austria will be drawn into voting and performing in one of the two semi-final.
Then the semi-finalists will be first drawn into the first or the second semi-final pot by pot, and after that also they will be drawn into the first or second half of that previously drawn semi-final. Sounds a bit chaotic but it's very straight forward and simple in the end.
Later once all the entries have been chosen and published and handed over to Ebu and their staging and props and all that is sorted out the producers will determinate the running order for each semi-final to make it smooth and dynamic and interesting, as they say.
As a Finn I am of course hoping for the second semi-final and second half as since introduction of two semi-finals we have qualified six times from the second semi-final versus four times from the first one. Also all the first semi-final qualifiers have performed in the second half of it so first half of first semi-final seems like a NQ written all over it. Finland has opened the first semi-final in 2016 (NQ) and closed it in 2023 (F). We have also opened the second one in 2022 (F) and closed it in 2025 (F). Let's see what 2026 has in store for us....
Oh dear. We are f*cked.
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