POST Eurovision 2026 analysis
The Eurovision Song Contest’s 70th edition, hosted in Vienna, Austria, has now concluded, and every fan of the contest is now suffering from what the fandom calls “P.E.D (Post Eurovision Depression)”. The contest this year had multiple unexpected moments, overachievers and underachievers (according to pre contest expectations) and more elements worth discussing. Vienna hosted the start of Eurovision’s 7th decade of existence, with plenty of context mentioned in my pre show analysis, but now that the show is over, it’s about that time to discuss its details and use those to stir up the conversation for Eurovision’s 2nd edition in its 7th decade, so whether you’re a member of the fandom like me or a casual looking to be prepared way beforehand, buckle up, as I showcase the events of Eurovision 2026 and what we might expect from Eurovision 2027.
2026’s semifinals.
The semifinals of Eurovision 2026 consisted of 15 countries in each semifinal, with each semifinal’s top 10 advancing to the final, these countries were Israel, Poland, Finland, Moldova, Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Lithuania, Sweden and Belgium from semifinal 1 and Bulgaria, Romania, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Ukraine, Albania, Malta, Czechia and Cyprus from semifinal 2 with this stage of the competition unfortunately saying goodbye to the songs representing Switzerland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Portugal, Montenegro, San Marino and Georgia.
A lot of the predicted qualifiers this year did indeed advance, however there were some unexpected eliminations, or at least eliminations that shocked the fans. Chief amongst those was perhaps the elimination of Montenegro’s Nova Zora by Tamara Zivkovic in semifinal 1, which, in the betting odds just before the contest, had a 43% chance to qualify and would have just missed out anyway if the odds were spot on but was widely loved amongst the fandom. Other notable non qualifiers also include San Marino, which is not considered a historic powerhouse or a country that often qualifies, but its song this year, “Superstar”, not only included veteran Eurovision singer Senhit but also international star Boy George, Luxembourg’s mother nature by Eva Marija which early on in the build up was accused of plagiarism and (probably partly because of that) wasn’t favoured to qualify in the odds, and Portugal, whose odds before the contest actually predicted would qualify at 10th, ended up finishing 12th in the semifinal.
Switching to a more positive tone, it’s also worth mentioning surprise qualifiers, which the odds predicted wouldn’t make the cut but ended up qualifying anyway. While the odds perfectly predicted which countries would qualify from semifinal 2 (though not where they finished from 1st to 10th), semifinal 1 has a particular exception, that being Belgium, with their song “Dancing on the Ice” by Essyla. In the odds, Belgium was given a 28% chance of qualifying and would have finished 14th; however, in the actual event, the country finished 10th, qualifying with 91 points to 11th place Estonia’s 79.
The Grand final
The 20 countries I had mentioned that qualified were joined by the big 4 (The UK, Germany, Italy and France) along with last year’s winner and thus this year’s host, Austria, to form the final 25 song Grand Final.
Similarly to the semifinals, this year saw the return of the juries, with 50% of the points awarded by them and the other 50% by the public’s vote. This year’s final was started with Soren and Denmark, followed by (in order) Germany, Israel, Belgium, Albania, Greece, Ukraine, Australia, Serbia, Malta, Czechia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the UK, France, Moldova, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, Cyprus, Italy, Norway, Romania, and closing the show with the host nation Austria’s entry by Cosmo, with interim performers along the way, such as last year’s winner JJ, 2006 winner Lordi and 2025’s Maltese representative Miriana Conte along the way, before we finally started to see how results would shape up with the juries from each country revealing their points.
Before the show, the top 3 favourites to win were Greece, Australia and the overwhelming favourite, Finland; the latter was the favourite because while the former two were predicted to garner a lot of points from either the juries or the televote, respectively, the Finnish entry had potential appeal from both. However, in what is probably the most unexpected twist we saw in this year’s contest, when the juries were giving their 12 points, one particular country (which was considered more of a televote heavyweight) was garnering a lot of 12 points, and that was Bulgaria with their song Bangaranga by Dara. As the jury points were fully allocated and the televote points were about to be revealed, the leaderboard showed Bulgaria at 1st with 204 points, along with Australia and Denmark tied at 165, France at 4th with 144 and Finland at 5th with 141; meanwhile, Austria was last with 1 point. As the televote rolled out, the public’s favourites began to show, with examples such as Romania earning 232 points and Moldova earning 183 points.
The Televote was, however, where it was confirmed that while the odds had almost perfectly predicted the semi finals, the predictions for the final were off, as Greece would get a relatively low (compared to fan expectation) public vote score of 147, Australia getting 122 and Finland getting 138, which meant none of the top 3 in the odds were going to win the contest.
Since the amount of points for each country is revealed in ascending order according to where the country finished in the jury leaderboard, Bulgaria was the last to have their final points tally finally revealed. In the end, the split screen showed Bulgaria and Israel, who had garnered enough televote points to climb to the number one spot until now. Their time at the top would be ended as Bulgaria was revealed to have gotten 312 points from the televote, which, along with their 204 from the juries, gave them 519 points total, enough to surpass Israel at 2nd with 343 points total, crowning the Balkan nation their first ever Eurovision win on the contest’s 70th birthday.
The Beauty of unpredictability
As Dara was performing for the 2nd time (as the winner always does), and as JJ was handing her the trophy, Europe was bouncing up and down with the Bangaranga vibe. However in the days immediately after, the realisation of just how unpredictable this year’s outcome was started to set in.
Indeed, as previously mentioned, the odds got the winner completely wrong, as the predicted top 3 ended up finishing 4th, 6th and 10th respectively, and while the odds did change slightly just before the contest’s start; Bulgaria was still only predicted to finish at 3rd; instead, the country that, for most of the buildup, sat outside of the top 3 in the odds ended up winning the whole thing. Bulgaria entered the contest with approximately €200,000 in budget (some others even crossed the €1M mark), while their broadcaster (along with a few other Balkan broadcasters) could barely afford to enter the contest; in fact, the EBU negotiated a deal with not only Bulgaria but also Romania and Albania so that they could enter the contest at a cheaper price, a deal which was ideal for both sides considering the countries’ broadcasters were reportedly not in the best shape financially, and the EBU, meanwhile, were probably looking for more countries to join or rejoin after 5 had boycotted due to Israel’s continued participation.
The fact that Bulgaria’s participation in and of itself came in that context, financially speaking, along with the fact that the odds didn’t have Bulgaria finishing above 3rd, made the finish to this year’s contest one of the most unpredictable in the 2020s.
The buildup to 2027 begins now.
While it will take a while before we start to see national selections (or selections in general) for next year’s contest, general preparations for the next contest tend to start soon after the conclusion of the previous edition.
One of the first procedures that takes place is deciding the host city, as cities usually tend to compete against each other, launching bids of their own to host the contest, pitching anything from the capacity of their stadium to the adequate transportation capacities to handle the contest. For 2027, while other contenders such as Varna exist, the overwhelming favourite to host the next Eurovision is the capital of Bulgaria; Sofia, this is due to many factors, such as the aforementioned transport capacity.
While the EBU would be slightly more relaxed then usual in terms of preparation work, it’s not at all a hot take to say that talks between them and the Bulgarian broadcaster (BNT) in regard to details around everything from budget to stage design are already ongoing.
In conclusion ,this year’s contest had many special (and some not so special) moments, both in the build up, all the way to the end. From the controversy discussed in my PRE contest article to the national selections, which resulted in hopefuls such as a potential return from Jerry Heil (with her entry Catharticus) missing out, and then the semifinals and finals, which gave us iconic performances and moments of their own. Overall, the 70th Eurovision was not a disappointing one, and while issues coming from this year’s contest (such as a notable decline in social media viewership) will have to be dealt with in the build up to 2027, 2026’s edition is definitely a memorable one, and as preparations for Bulgaria 2027 begin, news and context will continue to come in, building excitement for Bulgaria’s first time hosting.