Eurovision 2026 Vienna Semi Final 2 - Thursday 14 May 8pm

[RedToothBrush]

After Tuesday's festival of Fire and Ice (with no Will Ferrell irony) and the truly wonderfully socked Australia/Austria Interval act from Cutprice Katherine Ryan and her pal Austrian Smashy I'm sure you all can't wait. Tonight sees a Eurovision song called "Ya Ya Ya". Could it be anymore Eurovision? Get your pleather and odd knee high boots on.

1 BULGARIA Dara - Bangaranga
2 AZERBAIJAN Jiva - Just Go
3 ROMANIA Alexandra Căpitănescu - Choke Me
4 LUXEMBOURG Eva Marija - Mother Nature
5 CZECHIA Daniel Zizka - Crossroads
FRANCE Monroe - Regarde
6 ARMENIA Simón - Paloma Rumba
7 SWITZERLAND Veronica Fusaro - Alice
8 CYPRUS Antigoni - Jalla
AUSTRIA Cosmó - Tanzschein
9 LATVIA Atvara - Ēnā
10 DENMARK Søren Torpegaard Lund - Før Vi Går Hjem
11 AUSTRALIA Delta Goodrum - Eclipse
12 UKRAINE Leléka - Ridnym
UNITED KINGDOM Look Mum No Computer - Eins, Zwei, Drei
13 ALBANIA Alis - Nân
14 MALTA Aidan - Bella
15 NORWAY Jonas Lovv - Ya Ya Ya

Ten to Qualify for the Final.
The UK CAN vote in this Semi Final (you vote in the semi you appear in).
Voting for participants opens after the last song has been performed.
Voting for the UK is ONLINE ONLY through the ESC website or app. You need to make a card payment - 15p per vote.

Non participating countries (Hello Ireland) can vote as part the Rest of The World from midnight before the Semi-Final until the show starts when voting closes temporary before reopening after the acts have all performed.

There is a limit of 10 votes per person.

Felt sorry for Portugal and Estonia in semi final one.
Tonight Ukraine but Norway for me.
Romania was embarrassing as well as distasteful. Not a good representation of Europe.

Norway or Ukraine. Norway were fabulous.

Wow - the odds were spot on this time. That makes a change.

Bulgaria impressed me - much better than expected.

I haven’t been a fan of Czechia but they deserved to go through.

I loved Denmark as I expected to. I think they are on the right side of the line that Olly Alexander crossed.

Little bit disappointed with Australia but only because I had very high expectations.

I am happy for Aidan/Malta that he got through - he has worked so hard, but I don’t think his prop was quite right.

Really sad to see Switzerland and Latvia go. Loved them both.

I really liked all three of the pre qualified songs. I know I am in a minority with Austria but I think it’s fun, I thought the UK staging was better than I expected and I really liked the song. We have to get some points on Saturday surely. France is just in a class of its own really. Fantastic.

I thought the entertainment was a bit better than on Tuesday. Maybe they will step it up again for the final. Having said that I did really like the opening film and song on Tuesday.

Oh no, silly me, it was The Wicker Man!

Weirdly, just saw Akylas outside Euroclub when we were trying to suss out a route back to our Airbnb!

Australia now second fav (Greece has dropped). Israel up to 5th now.

I'm sad about Latvia but there's always Spotify.

Also - Go Delta!!!!

Crumbs, I thought semi-final one was much better in terms of variety of songs and styles. Some really gruesome stuff made it through to the finals in semi-2.

Draw.

First Half:
🇬🇷 Greece
🇧🇪 Belgium
🇷🇸 Serbia
🇦🇺 Australia
🇩🇰 Denmark
🇨🇿 Czechia

Second Half:
🇸🇪 Sweden
🇱🇹 Lithuania
🇵🇱 Poland
🇳🇴 Norway
🇨🇾 Cyprus
🇬🇧 United Kingdom

Producer's Choice:
🇮🇹 Italy
🇩🇪 Germany
🇮🇱 Israel
🇫🇮 Finland
🇲🇩 Moldova
🇭🇷 Croatia
🇧🇬 Bulgaria
🇺🇦 Ukraine
🇷🇴 Romania
🇲🇹 Malta
🇦🇱 Albania
🇫🇷 France

We got lucky I think. If we had got 1st half or producers choice we'd have ended up in a death slot.

In the end the producers came up with this:

Denmark have been put out of it with this. Dreadful slot for them. Germany are awful and naturally got the official Death Slot. Israel are third to get them over and done with before the show actually starts for real. Unlucky but shit Belgium follow Israel - that's not where you want to be.

Greece I don't think got a good draw at 6th. Likewise Ukraine are screwed - she's next to Delta again.

Delta and Australia, unsurprisingly got 8th. That's exactly what I thought she'd get - piano = slot right next to the an break - and I thought she'd get the early one just as the contest is getting going. She's done well in the public vote clearly.

Finland the fans got 17th. That's the slot most winners have come from.

Austria drew 25th months ago and that's a shit slot for their song.

The UK have 14th. I think this is decent. I think it's right after the ad break but it's second half and after Croatia's folky thing which is after the Bulgarian bouncing tits so the crowd will be up for it. This means a) our staging is big b) they think the UK are a crowd pleaser.

We are right before Faye does Les Mis (France) too. That's not great for her I think. Crowd will be unsettled but it is a big number. And she's right before Moldova 16th, another lively one and then Finland. So the middle of the show is full on. It looks like Moldova and Finland have done well in the Semis.

Then it all goes a bit shit again for a few songs. Poland straight after the big section and the fav isn't great.

Italy's wedding singer benefits from being after the Cypriot girls prancing on the tables in 22nd. That's a good slot.

But look at 23rd and 24th. Traditionally seen as two of the best slots and have bangers that have done well in the public vote - that's Norway and Romania.

I think our slot is solid. It's one that the rest of the running order is largely built around and it's one to get the show to a mid point peak and a bit of a warm up for some of the most popular songs. It's not a slot to win from but it's healthy and hopefully will gain us at least a couple of votes.

I think it could be a lot worse. I'm happy enough.

The winners definitely look like UK, Italy, Norway, Romania, Moldova, Australia and Finland. The losers are arguably Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Greece, France and Poland which probably isn't wildly unfair. Denmark I think have the biggest grumble though. They should be gutted but they have a big box and drew 1st half with Australia who were always going to get a better slot than them.

The draw definitely has made a difference to a few countries this year who might otherwise been given a different slot. Id argue that Denmark and the UK possibly would have been the other way around if they'd both got producers choice.

Will post a GF thread up around 9.30am once I've had time to copy and paste it into order.

Thanks Red. It's not great for Denmark, is it.

This year, nothing has really 'stuck' for me , as it has in previous years. Ours does have a singalong quality, that is catchy- but really there aren't many others that I've ended up humming along to since I heard them.

In fact, I woke up at 2am with Birdy 'Keeping your head up' going round my head instead- so that's not a good sign is it? .(Luckily, Fake Birdy didn't get through. ).

I even found myself singing bits of the 'Remember Monday' one yesterday, (probably haven't listened to it since last year) - I didn't even realise I knew any of the lyrics!

Looking forward to Saturday though.

I think the countries that drew the second half scuppered things for Denmark. I imagine the producers would quite have liked to put Cyprus, Sweden or UK as the opening slot. Maybe even Norway.

There has been grumbling that Finland are being prioritised to win (being allowed to play live for example). Denmark, Greece and Finland’s placings will add fuel to that fire. I think I saw that they also have a lot of returning Finland acts during the interval but now I can’t find a link so it may be more conspiracy theories.

I agree we have a good slot.

Here’s the link with the returning acts. Two from Finland. Erica Vikman and Lordi. Two from Ukraine too.

But the placings of Greece and Denmark are not something that the producers had a lot of choice in!

The trouble is both drew 1st half.

The best slot in first half is 8th. Followed by 6th.
Australia got 8th because of set considerations and good public voting scoring. Denmark also has set considerations. The options after you had put Australia in are 1st or 13th for a first half large set so Denmark were self screwed due to The Box. (Olly Alexander's position in the running order was decided due to the staging). Greece did actually get a good slot. The issue is it's not in the preferred second half.

I strongly suspect we would have been 1st but for drawing that second half allocation. It was a real gift for us.

Any conspiracy about setting it up for Finland really needs to understand how they allocate the running order before throwing a tantrum!

There are so many tantrums about everything on Facebook from the so called fans.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/5530038-eurovision-vienna-2026-grand-final-16th-may-8pm&utm_source=copylink

it’s weird that people try to argue that the decision on running order is biased in some way. I don’t suppose the producers actually care who wins. I mean it really doesn’t make a difference to them if it’s Finland rather than Denmark (or Australia or Greece), does it?

I expect there's one country they really, really don't want to win because it'd be the end of Eurovision. But apart from that, very good point.

Update.

The reason we had a video of the UK entry rather than go to the Green Room was because there was a skint that the BBC clearly freaked out about. It was LGBT focused and amongst other things they referred to 'The Gays'. So the Beeb pulled it. They are terrified of ANYTHING controversial this year. Apart from Israel and references to choking women.

I've tried to see if there is the live show on Eurovisions YouTube channel. There normally is. But nope I can't see either Semi on there ATM.

I have seen various comments from bewildered European LGBT people basically saying it was very cringy and ‘errr thanks 🤷‍♀️’. Also been searching for a clip but getting not getting very far apart from this Tik Tok. Which I think shows part of it. I thought it was very odd when they did our music video at that point in the evening.

I am surprised that Moldova and Finland are right next to each other in the running order for the final, not sure that is good for either of them.

Anyone else not getting the hype for the Australian song at all? Delta has an incredible voice, but the song sounds very dated to me. The staging feels like they have thrown everything at it, and dare I say it feels a bit desperate, which is a shame because with her voice and the right song, she could win without all the fireworks/glittery pianos/cherry picker and glittery harness.

I saw the clip/skit about 'The Gays' because I was watching the livestream on YouTube. It was odd and dull and I wondered what the point of it was.

Yes, I agree. Something more pared back would have worked better for her. She's a good singer, but doesn't need all the bells and whistles. I'm not sure I liked the song either.