{"id":448111,"date":"2026-05-14T08:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/448111\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T08:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T08:08:08","slug":"second-eurovision-semi-final-takes-place-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/448111\/","title":{"rendered":"Second Eurovision semi-final takes place tonight"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second Eurovision Song Contest semi-final takes place in Vienna tonight, with 15 countries competing for the final ten places in Saturday’s Grand Final.<\/p>\n

The 70th edition of the contest is being staged at the Wiener Stadthalle in Austria, following JJ\u2019s victory for Austria last year with Wasted Love.<\/p>\n

Bulgaria will open tonight\u2019s semi-final, with Azerbaijan, Romania, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Armenia, Switzerland, Cyprus, Latvia, Denmark, Australia, Ukraine, Albania, Malta and Norway also hoping to qualify.<\/p>\n

France, Austria and the United Kingdom, who are already through to the final, will also perform during tonight\u2019s show.<\/p>\n

Look Mum No Computer will represent the UK, the stage name of Lincolnshire-born musician Sam Battle, who will perform Eins, Zwei, Drei.<\/p>\n

Australia is being represented by former Neighbours actress and pop star Delta Goodrem, who will perform Eclipse.<\/p>\n

\"Delta
\nDelta Goodrem performing Eclipse for Australia during rehearsal at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna<\/p>\n

The semi-final comes after a tense opening night on Tuesday<\/a>, when Israel\u2019s entrant Noam Bettan qualified for the Grand Final with his song Michelle after receiving a mixed reaction from the crowd.<\/p>\n

The European Broadcasting Union and Austrian host broadcaster ORF said one audience member, close to a microphone, loudly expressed their views as Bettan began his performance and during the song, which was heard on the live broadcast. They said the person was later removed after continuing to disturb the audience, while three other people were also removed from the arena for disruptive behaviour.<\/p>\n

Moldova, Sweden, Croatia, Greece, Finland, Belgium, Lithuania, Poland and Serbia also qualified from the first semi-final. Portugal, Georgia, Montenegro, Estonia and San Marino were eliminated.<\/p>\n

San Marino\u2019s entry, Superstar, was performed by Senhit and co-written by Boy George, who joined her on stage during Tuesday night\u2019s show.<\/p>\n

Read more:
Eurovision boycott: How did we (not) get here?<\/a><\/p>\n

Ireland is not taking part in this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest and RT\u00c9 is not broadcasting the competition, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed Israel would be allowed to compete.<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 said in December that Ireland\u2019s participation remained “unconscionable” given the loss of life in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there. The broadcaster also said it remained deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza during the conflict and the continued denial of access to international journalists to the territory.<\/p>\n

Ireland is one of five countries boycotting this year\u2019s contest over Israel\u2019s participation, alongside Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia.<\/p>\n

The EBU has introduced changes to the voting system for this year\u2019s contest following concerns raised after Eurovision 2025, when Israel\u2019s Yuval Raphael received the highest number of public votes and finished second overall behind Austria after jury votes were taken into account.<\/p>\n

Under the revised system, professional juries have returned to the semi-finals, while the maximum number of votes any viewer can cast has been reduced from 20 to ten, with audiences encouraged to support multiple songs.<\/p>\n

Saturday night\u2019s Grand Final will take place at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The second Eurovision Song Contest semi-final takes place in Vienna tonight, with 15 countries competing for the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-448111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}