{"id":367578,"date":"2026-01-13T15:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T15:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/367578\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T15:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T15:52:14","slug":"eurovision-2026-whos-in-which-semi-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/367578\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurovision 2026: Who’s in which Semi-final?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The running order of the Semi-finals will be decided later by the producer of Eurovision 2026, \u00d6sterreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), and approved by the EBU.<\/p>\n

The allocation draw took place on 12 January 2026 in Vienna’s city hall, Wiener Rathaus.<\/p>\n

Facts about the Semi-final draw 35 countries<\/a> are participating in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026. Five of the countries are pre-qualified for the Grand Final (Big-4 and Austria).The 30 countries were distributed into five allocation draw pots<\/a> based on the voting pattern between them to avoid too much neighbor voting.After a country was drawn, a second draw determined whether that country will participate in the first or second part of the Semi-final.The five countries pre-qualified for the Grand Final (Big-4 and Austria) were also drawn to decide which Semi-final these countries will vote in.The final running order will be decided later by the Austrian producer ORF and approved by the EBU.Allocation Draw Pots<\/p>\n

To ensure fair voting and competition, the 30 semi-finalists were distributed into five Draw Pots, based on the voting pattern to avoid too much neighbor voting:<\/p>\n

Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, SwitzerlandAustralia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, SwedenArmenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Israel, Poland, UkraineBelgium, Czechia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Portugal, RomaniaCyprus, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, San Marino\"Eurovision<\/p>\n

Basel 2025All about Eurovision Song Contest 2025<\/p>\n

<\/a>How was the draw made?<\/p>\n

The draw was divided into two parts:<\/p>\n

1) Which pre-qualified countries vote in which Semi-final?<\/p>\n

The first part determined which of the five pre-qualified countries (Winner: Austria. Big-4: France, Germany, Italy, and UK) will vote in which of the two Semi-finals.<\/p>\n

2) Who’s in which Semi-final?<\/p>\n

The second part determined which of the two Semi-finals (and in which half) each country will compete in.The first five countries for Semi-final 1 were drawn: From each of the five allocation draw pots<\/a>, a country was drawn, and after each country, a second draw determined if the country will perform in the first half or in the second half of Semi-final 1. The first five countries for Semi-final 2 were then drawn (same recipe as the five for Semi-final 1). This continued until each of the 30 countries had been allocated to one of the two Semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The running order of the Semi-finals will be decided later by the producer of Eurovision 2026, \u00d6sterreichischer Rundfunk…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6846,55724,96,65538,18168,140648,125733,140645,140646,140647,391,56,54,55,65541],"class_list":["post-367578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-draw","tag-ebu","tag-entertainment","tag-esc","tag-eurovision","tag-grand-final","tag-orf","tag-running-order","tag-semi-final-1","tag-semi-final-2","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vienna-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}