It’s been a longer-than-usual time coming, and Eurovision fans and number crunchers have had the patience of saints, but finally the official running orders for the two Eurovision 2016 semi-finals have been announced. Compiled by the SVT production team and approved by the EBU Executive Supervisor and Chairperson of the Reference Group, the running orders have been put together by the producers to give each song a chance to shine, according to 2016 Contest Producer Christer Björkman:
My goal is to give every song maximum space so it’s surrounded by other songs that make it stand out and shine for three minutes. This also reduces the anxiety surrounding where a country is placed in the running order. Wherever the artist is singing they have a chance to be noticed.
Here are the running orders of each semi, followed by the official recap video of the songs in order:
Semi-final 1:
- Finland
- Greece
- Moldova
- Hungary
- Croatia
- The Netherlands
- Armenia
- San Marino
- Russia
- Czech Republic
- Cyprus
- Austria
- Estonia
- Azerbaijan
- Montenegro
- Iceland
- Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Malta
Semi-final 2:
- Latvia
- Poland
- Switzerland
- Israel
- Belarus
- Serbia
- Ireland
- FYR Macedonia
- Lithuania
- Australia
- Slovenia
- Romania
- Bulgaria
- Denmark
- Ukraine
- Norway
- Georgia
- Albania
- Belgium
The final running order will be announced early on Friday 13 May, after both semi-finals have been taken place, although host country Sweden has already drawn position 9 at random.
Who do you think the winners and losers from this running order are?
