Intro Post

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Gonna be honest, after this year’s Eurovision ended, my motivation to review it has been much lower than after last year’s contest. The Israel situation soured the entire show for me this year, far more than the past two years. But I’m pulling through and 11 days after the grand final ended, I finished going through the semis! 10 songs down, 25 to go.

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Introduction

Hello again to my readers—hope you’ve all had a good Eurovision week! I certainly did, despite my heart pounding near the end of the results, but I’ll get to that later. In my time zone the show starts at 3 PM, so to watch it I had to take Tuesday and Thursday off work. I chose to take Friday off as well so that I’d have three days off in a row.

Last time Eurovision came to Austria was in 2015 right after Conchita Wurst’s victory, and it took place in the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna. The very same building was happily willing to host the contest in 2026, so it was pretty obvious we’d be back in Vienna, and indeed we were. It was the first Eurovision hosted in a country’s capital since Lisbon 2018.

The EBU made a big deal about this being the 70th Eurovision Song Contest, so it’s quite ironic that this is the contest with the fewest competing countries since semifinals were introduced in 2004. There were 36 countries competing in 2004; this year there were only 35. Moldova returned after skipping last year, Romania after skipping the past two years, and Bulgaria after skipping the past three, whereas five countries boycotted the contest because of the EBU’s asinine refusal to ban Israel from participating even though their presence is bringing the contest into serious disrepute.

In the leadup to Eurovision 2026, four countries announced that they would not compete in the contest if Israel was allowed in: Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain. The original plan was that in November 2025, the EBU would hold a vote on whether to allow Israel to participate in Eurovision 2026. However, after intensive lobbying from Israeli politicians, the EBU put forth a few measures to change the contest’s voting system and held a vote on December 4, 2025 on whether to implement these changes, and if these changes were rejected, only then would there have been a vote on whether to ban Israel. The vote for the new changes was passed, and in response the four countries I mentioned previously all pulled out of Eurovision 2026. All the other countries that were on the fence confirmed participation that day, except for Iceland who took another week to think about it, then pulled out on December 11.

So basically, the EBU was perfectly willing to let five countries withdraw, one of which was a member of the Big Five, just so they wouldn’t have to do the right thing and ban Israel from Eurovision 2026. Some people believe that the only reason the EBU convinced Romania and Bulgaria to rejoin the contest this year was to fill some gaps these countries left behind. Among the Boycotting Five as I’ll call them from here on out, the Netherlands and Iceland were the only ones to still broadcast the contest this year, and Spain was the only one that hosted what would’ve normally been their national final, which was Benidorm Fest 2026.

So what were those new changes the EBU implemented so they wouldn’t have to ban Israel? The semifinals switched back to being a mix of jury and televote, just as they had been before 2023; the maximum number of televotes per person was reduced from twenty to ten; the number of jury members per country was increased from five to seven; two jurors in each country had to be between 18 and 25 years old; and some new restrictions were put in place against government-funded ad campaigns. All these are certainly welcome changes, but it’s so scummy that the EBU set things up so that if Israel is banned which I’m sure is what the majority of people truly want, the contest would not implement these needed changes.

As soon as I saw the fateful news of December 4, I decided I would not be attending Eurovision 2026 in person. I had already felt iffy about it because I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough money to attend, but the EBU’s decision not to ban that country meant I simply wasn’t interested in going anymore. I decided I would still watch the show and write a review of it once it’s finished, but I felt dread instead of excitement leading up to the show. Despite all this, I still am here writing a review of Eurovision 2026, because this contest and its fanbase are simply a part of my life at this point. I have ten non-qualifiers to go through in this post, then 25 finalists to review in the next one: ten qualifiers from Tuesday, another ten qualifiers from Thursday, the Big Four because Spain isn’t there, and at the very end of the show, Austria’s host entry.

This year, the entire contest was streamed live on YouTube for people in almost every country in the world to watch for free, including the United States. However, I decided to watch the show live with German commentary because that’s also possible to do from free here. For this blog I’ll rewatch the semifinals with German commentary, then the final with British commentary. EDIT: Actually I have the German commentary for all three shows in HD so I’ll stick to that.

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Portugal: Rosa

Artist: Bandidos do Cante

Language: Portuguese

Key: E major, and after an elegant violin solo, D♭ major

My ranking: to be determined

After three entries that comfortably qualified, plus one that not-so-comfortably qualified despite being Sweden, the first country to stay behind in the grand final is Portugal, who had till now been enjoying a five-year qualification streak.

I’m kind of surprised Portugal ended up competing this year. It felt as if they were inches away from joining the Boycotting Five, because their broadcaster RTP has clearly been frustrated about Eurovision’s handling of Israel the past few years, especially due to the nail polish incident in 2024. Their broadcaster was on the fence about participating until the December 4 decision, and then out of the 16 contestants in their national final, all but three said they will not go to Eurovision if they win. Bandidos do Cante were one of two who outright said they would go to Eurovision, so it saved RTP some headache when these guys won Festival da Canção this year.

This was one of four songs I voted for in semifinal 1: three votes each to this, Estonia, and Croatia, and one for Sweden. A decade ago this song would have been blatantly dead in the water, but this year I really felt these guys would have a chance to qualify, because the televoters have more appreciation for understated cultural songs than they used to. Unfortunately this landed eleventh in the jury and televote, and twelfth overall, so it was quite a clear non-qualifier.

This is a romantic lullaby ballad sung by a quintet of men plus a violinist, in a style of harmonies that is native to the country’s Alentejo region. It’s a typical Portuguese entry in this sense—someone no one but Portugal would send to the contest, and I love them for that. I think this is one of those songs I don’t feel a need to revisit much, but when I do I can’t help but think “d’awww”. It helps that in this video by YouTuber ESC Gabe, he mentioned that the lyrics are about a man who sees roses in a garden and they remind him of his wife, and Gabe said the lyrics make him think of his own wife. So well done Gabe, your Portugal propaganda worked on me! It didn’t work on everyone else, but ah well.

My favorite part of the song has to be the violin solo that leads to an unusual key change: from E major down a minor third to D♭ major. Downwards key changes aren’t common in popular music, so it’s cool that this song has one and does it in such a seamless way.

Georgia: On Replay

Artist: Bzikebi, the winners of Junior Eurovision 2008

Language: English, though I’m sure some viewers had no idea what language it’s in

Key: C minor

My ranking: to be determined

This year, Georgia thought they could do well by sending Junior Eurovision winners, since they’ve always done so well in the junior contest, so it’s quite unfortunate that they landed dead last place. I can see why it didn’t qualify though: coming right after Portugal’s sweet ballad, this one passed me through like a non-event. It’s an ubpeat synthy song with nonsensical lyrics, which I’m sure isn’t a deterrent to some people liking the song, but I’m afraid the music isn’t good enough to make up for how nonsensical it is. Plus, I just find the whole song kind of repetitive. I find it neither good nor bad, just perfectly alright.

Montenegro: Nova zora

Artist: Tamara Živković

Language: Serbo-Croatian (Montenegrin) with short phrases in English

Key: F minor

My ranking: to be determined

Proof that the German commentator Thorsten Schorn is a Eurovision nerd: the song’s title made him think of Nora Nova, the contestant who represented Germany back in Eurovision 1964. I’m a massive Eurovision nerd and not even I made that connection! Given his extensive knowledge about the contest, it’s no wonder he was selected to compete in the commentators’ quiz show.

After scoring dead last place in 2025, Montenegro came closer to qualifying this year. They placed 13th place out of 15 competing entries and even scored tenth in the televote. If the semifinals this year were still televote only, this and Estonia wolud have qualified over Belgium and (sob) Sweden. So what went wrong with Montenegro this time?

For one thing, their song had to come after Finland of all fucking countries. I think most viewers were still reeling in shock from how awesome Finland’s song and performance were. This song has pretty weak low-budget staging and for some reason yet another outfit with a weird circle, just like the last two times Montenegro competed. Musically it’s a mediocre girlbop that sort of reminds me of “Esa diva” last year, also a song I wasn’t a fan of. I didn’t care for this song when it first was selected for Eurovision. I started liking it a little more over the course of the pre-season, but now that the show’s over I find it meh again. Montesong this year had so many better songs than this! Just watch a recap and decide on your own which songs you like best. I quite like “Doline” and “Pjevaj vilo” from that selection.

Estonia: Too Epic to Be True

Artist: Vanilla Ninja, returning from 2005

Language: English

Key: B♭ major

My ranking: to be determined

This right here has to be my guilty pleasure of the year. A song that I feel I shouldn’t like, but when I’m in the right mood I do. It helps that the song in running order came after Finland and Montenegro, two songs that were rather grim. That’s why I gave three of my votes for this song—it made me smile and I couldn’t help with it! It’s an upbeat girly pop rock song that is about a romance that may seem too epic to be true but is very much real. It’s very campy and uncomplicated. I don’t love the song that much or anything, as you can tell from my ranking (this will make sense when my ranking comes out), but I can’t help having a little soft spot for it.

Some people suspected this could get televotes from Germany, because the band has decades of popularity in that part of Europe. In reality it only got one point from German televoters—the most televotes it got came from their neighbor Finland. It didn’t get any televotes from the rest of the world either.

While I’m here, check out a cool song I like from this year’s Eesti Laul: “Warrior” by Laura Prits. A sassy-girl synth rock banger with a chorus I can’t help but clap along to. I watched Estonia’s national final this year and it had a huge amount of great songs like this.

San Marino: Superstar

Artist: Senhit (returning from 2011, 2020, and 2021) ft. Boy George

Language: English

Key: E♭ minor (verses), G♯ minor (chorus)

My ranking: to be determined

This is just a fucking nothing song, even for San Marino. Senhit seems like a cool person and all but what is the purpose of this song? Why does it exist? Why is it in Eurovision for that matter? It’s some sort of shitty disco pop song that barely even exists in my mind, and neither does Boy George’s ten-second part of the song where he sings only one note repeatedly. This type of entry is par for the course for San Marino, I suppose.

This got more televotes in the semifinal than Sweden, so I guess some people must have been charmed by Senhit—she really tries her best to engage the crowd. Meanwhile, I’m told barely anyone outside the UK knows or cares who Boy George is. This also got more televote points than Belgium, and Georgia. It got more jury points than Georgia. How the hell didn’t this finish dead last? Even Poland’s song right after, which I don’t like at all, doesn’t seem so bad compared to this.

Rest of semifinal 1:

I found the opening act rather sweet: a multilingual rendition of “L’amour est bleu”, a Eurovision entry performed in Vienna way back in 1967, performed by a crowd of people of all ages and backgrounds plus Vicky Leandros herself, now 79 years old. It’s a globally famous song that I heard just a week ago as hold music on the phone when fixing a problem with my Internet connection. Unfortunately, near the start of the show we get an indicator that Austria’s hosting this year kinda sucks ass: there was an audio track gag on screen but the timing was totally off so the joke failed to land. My god, these presenters (Victoria and Michael) are so stilted and awkward. Michael Ostrowski was the better of the two and maybe he could’ve been elevated by a better co-host.

The filler portions of the show were pretty boring this year, though in all fairness in most years they are. The interviews with past contestants and fans were nice enough, but I rolled my eyes at that one guy talking about Eurovision showing “the world not as it is, but as it should be”. That’s a mantra Martin Green invented to justify not banning Israel from Eurovision, and it feels so performative when people say it. Intentionally ignoring the elephant in the room.

OK, what comes after the songs? A bit more banter from the hosts, an audio track joke that was actually timed correctly… the first interval act is real fun. An extravagant circus show full of stunts which succeeds in what I’ve always said the purpose of interval acts should be: to keep the audience glued to the TV so they don’t change the channel. It’s a massive crowd of people performing acrobatic tricks and dancing their hearts out, what’s not to love? This is without a doubt the best of all the interval acts this year. The voting lines were announced to be closed by a watch party in Sofia, which I like to see as foreshadowing of who would win this year. Then comes a Eurovision quiz segment with commentators (one of whom is Thorsten Schorn) which has a glaring typo onscreen (2021 instead of 2012) but is otherwise quite fun and good for Eurovision nerds.

Oh god, right, after that comes the cringey Australia/Austria interval act. The audience clearly didn’t find it funny at all, least of all the Australians, and neither did I. Seriously, it’s insane how cold the audience was throughout this… thing. Compare this to “Love Love Peace Peace” from ten years back, which made the audience go wild because it was ACTUALLY FUNNY. After this came a compilation of the entries competing in semifinal 2, where the audience’s reactions made it very clear who would do well. They went particularly wild at Romania and Denmark.

And now for the qualifiers… you can see my reaction here. Basically, the only two qualifiers that surprised me were Belgium as the third one, and Poland as the final one. All the others I thought were pretty obvious. Note that this year didn’t have the three-way split screens from Basel 2025. I’m guessing the reason this change was reverted was because the split screens put an unnecessary amount of extra pressure on the artists. I remember the guys from Ziferblat criticizing this exact thing when attending their Wiwibloggs interview last year. Fuck, I hope I get to go to Eurovision 2027. Even if Israel isn’t banned I still want to go, because at this point I’ve lost all hope that the EBU will ban them.

OK, now for semifinal 2!

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Azerbaijan: Just Go

Artist: Jiva (Jamila Hashimova), who Thorsten Schorn said competed to represent Azerbaijan back in 2011

Language: English and Azeri

Key: C minor

My ranking: to be determined

In one of two Discord servers I chatted in while watching this year’s Eurovision,* a friend of mine said after Bulgaria ended: “Literally zero percent chance whatever comes after that is worse. Oh wait it’s Azerbaijan maybe it will be worse.” That should tell you how far down Azerbaijan has sunk in Eurovision.

Last year, Azerbaijan finished dead last with 7 points; this year they finished dead last with only two. So it’s still possible for Azerbaijan to sink even lower next year! And as with last year, I’m not surprised that this landed last place. Jiva sings the song really well and wears an awesome dress, and it’s nice to see Azerbaijan sing the entire second half of the song in their own language (take notes, Germany and Poland!), but the song is just a total nothingburger. This ballad incorporates some subtle ethnic elements sort of like their 2024 entry did, but that’s nowhere near enough to be able to win viewers over. Nothing wrong with the song, but nothing great about it either. Maybe next year Azerbaijan should try sending a fun ethno-bop to the likes of “Every Way That I Can” or “Düm Tek Tek”, if they want to get back into the final. (Also, I should totally do an 8-bit cover of “Düm Tek Tek” sometime.)

* The Discord server I’m referring to is a Homestuck fan server because of course my brain is still infected with this fucking webcomic. The other server is a Eurovision fan server called Grootyvision.

Luxembourg: Mother Nature

Artist: Eva Marija Kavaš Puc

Language: English, a first for Luxembourg

Key: C major, or A minor, really you could say it’s either one

My ranking: to be determined

After Romania sent a song that screamed at me loudly to vote for it, Luxembourg performed a song that was pleading for me not to vote for it (or in Grootyvision terms, give it -3 points). I view the song as essentially Only Teardrops 2.0. I was fairly positive about “Only Teardrops” in my 2013 review, but that was before I noticed the irritating way Emmelie gasps for breath in every other word, which ruined the whole song for me. Everyone else seems to call this a rehash of “Fairytale” by Alexander Rybak because of the violin—never a good sign when people compare an entry to winners from over a decade ago.

Like “Only Teardrops”, this song has really generic chord progressions, a style of cursive singing that annoys the shit out of me, and they’re even in the same key signature. Not that I hate songs in C major or anything, it’s just that if two songs have the same key signature I very often mix them up. The song has a nice violin part at least, but Finland out-violined her by a thousand miles. “Only Teardrops” won the contest back in 2013, whereas this failed to qualify by quite a wide margin, which shows that Europe’s musical tastes have changed a lot in the past 13 years.

Side note: Eva Marija’s parents are both from Slovenia who was in the Boycotting Five this year, so I had wondered if that meant she’d get any points from the rest of the world. She didn’t. Probably doesn’t help that Slovenia didn’t broadcast Eurovision this year.

Armenia: Paloma Rumba

Artist: Simón Hovhannisyan

Language: English

Key: E minor with a sort of Phrygian scale thing going on

My ranking: to be determined

This is without a doubt the most robbed non-qualifier this year. Nothing else comes close. It’s a fun and hectic song that totally sounds like something Electric Callboy would write, or at least an imitation thereof, so it’s totally up my street. If you don’t know what Electric Callboy’s songs sound like, I’ll describe this as an aggressive synthy rock banger with a mix of rapping and singing, and a really catchy guitar riff to tie it together. I love the dancing and running in the performance, I love the “ole-ole-ole-fa” bridge with the bassy synths, and I love the speed-up part at the end. I don’t love this quite as much as other hectic songs, but it’s still an awesome piece of music that totally should’ve qualified. I’m guessing the reason this failed to qualify is twofold: this isn’t a jury-friendly song, and while Armenia had lots of diaspora votes to boost their entry last year, it didn’t get the same benefit this year.

This is the only song in this semifinal I spared votes for that didn’t qualify. I gave five of my ten votes to Romania, because she absolutely KILLED it on stage and I couldn’t not vote for her, two each to Denmark and Malta, and one for this. The fact that I only gave this one vote shows that it didn’t hit me quite as hard as other songs I liked pre-show did.

Switzerland: Alice

Artist: Veronica Fusaro

Language: English. Thorsten Schorn remarked it’s been a long time since Switzerland last chose to sing in Italian, Geman, or Romansh.

Key: E♭ minor

My ranking: to be determined

You can always count on Switzerland to provide awesome staging in Eurovision, as this entry proves. This might sound like a backhanded compliment, but I can guarantee you I love the song as well. I considered sparing some votes for it but decided against it in the end, and it looks like many other televoters felt the same. Denmark and Malta had such incredibly charming performers I just had to spare votes for them that day, whereas I decided against doing the same for Switzerland. Oh man, I’m excited to analyze Denmark’s song in my next post! Then the next two songs will both get some scalding rants from me. But anyway, back to Switzerland.

Veronica performs a sort of indie guitar ballad in 6/8 time about a woman named “Alice” stuck in an abusive relationship with the right mix of pain and sass, and the web of red ropes where the backing dancers perform gym stunts made my jaw drop the first time I saw it. The song is (spoiler alert) nowhere near my favorite of the year, but I’m always happy to listen to it whenever I remember it exists. I might have even added it to my Spotify playlist if I hadn’t totally gotten bored of having one almost a year ago. I only ever used that playlist while in car rides and after a while I simply couldn’t bear all those ads. Maybe it’s for the best this way, since music playlists can risk making me hear a song so much I get sick of it.

The coolest thing about the song has to be its use of electric guitars, which appear in small hints in the verses to give them a tinge of aggression, and then they take control of the song when the chorus drops. It’s a lovely song in general yet I can totally see why this didn’t qualify: it doesn’t have a strong target audience to which it can scream to give it votes. Compare this to Bulgaria and Cyprus which girlbop lovers are guaranteed to vote for, Albania for those that love their drama ballads, and Australia for the definition of jury bait.

This actually came close to qualifying since it scored 9th in both the jury and televote, but 11th overall, which means it could have scraped through had the numbers been slightly different. But can we stop saying that songs that scored top 10 in the jury and televote but still didn’t qualify were “objectively robbed”? I think people only say that if a song they’re passionate about got this type of result. By this logic, “1944” by Jamala and “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence objectively didn’t deserve to win, since they won neither the jury nor the televote, which is total nonsense. “1944” was absolutely the right winner of 2016, and I’m glad “Arcade” won 2019 because the Netherlands had gone 44 years without a victory.

Latvia: Ēnā

Artist: Liene Atvara

Language: Latvian

Key: G minor

My ranking: to be determined

Turns out this semifinal has two depressing ballads sung by women in gorgeous dresses. I love the way the dress has a bunch of sparkly gems over it but mostly only on one side. Atvara seems like a lovely person and I’m sad for her failing to qualify, but this song is extremely not my cup of tea. It’s too depressing for me, that’s the main thing. It’s not depressing in a cathartic way like “Saudade, saudade” or “Répondez-moi”, at least not in my opinion. But I totally get why people like it and feel it was robbed.

As much as this song is way too gloomy for me, I can’t deny Atvara puts all her heart into her performance, and I appreciate the lyrics having a uniquely serious subject matter: families that get into horrific abusive drama due to alcoholic parents. I just like fun dancey music better than depressing music, okay? Most of the time anyway.

Alright, time to listen to the rest of the qualifying songs (god how I love Denmark), then review the rest of the show.

Rest of semifinal 2:

A downside of “Wasted Love” winning Eurovision 2025 is that we have to suffer through Austria’s hosting again, which may well be even worse than that of 2015. Another downside is that in the opening of semifinal 2, I have to hear that goddamn song again, or rather, a parody of it sung by the hosts with some amusing slapstick shenanigans. Unlike JJ, Victoria Swarovski at least knows that it’s “wasted love”, not “woisted love”.

What interval acts do we have here… the hosts sing the 1982 hit song “I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters for whatever reason, and JJ sings his new single “Unknown” which is operatic but not as over-the-top so as “Wasted Love”. In the recaps I instinctively turned my headphones up for “Bangaranga” because I’ve decided to embrace that it’s an awesome song. In the green room interviews, I’m a bit baffled by Monroe (who was born 2008) claiming her earliest Eurovision memory is Celine Dion singing “Ne partez pas sans moi”, which happened in 1988. The green room interviewer Emily Busvine is a much better host than Michael and Victoria are—she has a friendly demeanor and I wish it had just been her hosting the show. Then we’d have had one charming, affable woman hosting the contest just like the old days.

As for the qualifiers, here are my reactions. I was only really surprised by Cyprus qualifying (because she sounded out of breath throughout) and Czechia as the final one. All the other qualifiers this year felt obvious, except maybe Norway. I wasn’t as invested in the results this year as I was in the past few, so my reactions were more “okay yeah, I’m not surprised” than “YES YES YES YES YES!!!!” I’m glad Denmark was revealed as the ninth qualifier instead of the tenth, because otherwise the reveal of the final qualifier would’ve felt too obvious.

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Alright guys, see you in a week or two or however long it takes as I finish up reviewing this disastrous Eurovision year. The part I’m most looking forward to is dissecting “Bangaranga” and explaining why it’s a great winner. It’s gonna be tough to rank this year, because many songs are the type that I enjoy while they’re happening but feel no reason to come back to, but I’ll try.