Eurovision Song Contest Final Lineup Revealed Following Thursday Night’s Second Semi-Final

The final lineup for the Eurovision Song Contest has now been revealed. Thursday night’s semi-final was the second of two, giving European nations a chance to vote for the top 27 acts for Saturday night’s final. It is an annual event that sees Australia join for the first time this year, despite not being part of Europe.

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Vienna, Austria after Conchita Wurst won last year. The announcement of the winner caused great controversy considering she went on stage with her real beard, but wore a long ball gown.

According to the official Eurovision Song Contest website, the running order was determined by the show producers, and approved by Jon Ola Sand and Dr. Frank-Dieter Freiling, the executive supervisor of EBY and Reference Group chairman respectively. At the moment, the break is planned for between song 14 and song 15, but changes may be made before Saturday night. It will mean that Austria’s own song will be followed by the break.

As there are now so many countries taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest, a decision was made a number of years ago to offer semi-finals to cut down the time required to perform all songs. It means now that there are semi-finals held on the Tuesday and Thursday before the Saturday night final, although the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Australia and the winning country are always guaranteed a place due to the amount of money they place into the competition.

According to The Daily Mirror, Ireland, Switzerland and Malta failed to advance to the final performance. However, Poland, Sweden and Latvia all gained positions on Saturday night.

The various countries telephone to vote for their favorite act, but are not allowed to vote for their own. The various acts are then given totals ranging from one to 12 points. In some cases, countries go home receiving no points at all. This has happened to the UK once, which has not seen success since 1997. Many blame the relationship with the rest of Europe for that.

Some political voting certainly takes place during the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. For example, most of the Scandinavian countries give each other higher votes, and Ireland and the UK tend to vote highly for each other. Recently, the vote is split 50-50 between telephone votes and a judging panel to help avoid too much controversy surrounding political voting. The final of the Eurovision Song Contest will air on Saturday night, with 27 acts performing.

[Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images]