Five years ago tomorrow, the EBU revealed the first ever producer-determined running order draw following the introduction of the rule ahead of the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. As we are still awaiting the reveal of the running order for the 2018 Eurovision semi-finals, we’ve taken a look at exactly when the announcement has happened in every contest since the rule’s introduction.
Looking through the archives
To do this, we’ve simply looked through eurovision.tv’s archives and found the following data:
- The date of each year’s semi-final running order announcement
- The date of each year’s mid-March head of delegations meeting. This tends to run over a Sunday to Tuesday period, we have taken the Monday with it widely agreed as the entry deadline date.
- The date of day one of each year’s rehearsal schedule.
Our findings
| Contest | Order Reveal | Days After Deadline | Days Before Rehearsals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyiv 2017 | 31 March | 18 days (13 March) | 30 days (30 April) |
| Stockholm 2016 | 8 April | 25 days (14 March) | 24 days (2 May) |
| Vienna 2015 | 23 March | 7 days (16 March) | 49 days (11 May) |
| Copenhagen 2014 | 24 March | 7 days (17 March) | 35 days (28 April) |
| Malmö 2013 | 28 March | 10 days (18 March) | 39 days (6 May) |
We’ve never had an order reveal later than April 8th, which was 25 days after the entry deadline for Stockholm 2016. Typically, the running order arrives in the last week of March. It may be important to factor in Easter weekend, which in 2016 was as early as March 25th-28th. This year’s Easter weekend falls on March 30th-April 2nd, almost the same dates as in 2013 (March 29th-April 1st). Therefore, it is possible that this year’s running order could appear before the end of this week.
Nevertheless, despite the increasingly earlier entry deadlines, the running orders for both Stockholm and Kyiv took significantly longer to arrive than the previous three contests. If this is the start of a pattern, it would make it likely that the running order will arrive week commencing April 2nd.
The work is definitely underway
Eurovision 2018 Head of Production, Ola Melzig, gave us our first taste of the 2018 running order being determined. A couple of weeks ago, Ola shared this photo of contest producer, Christer Björkman, using his famous post-it note system to begin the all-important decision-making.
When do you think the Eurovision 2018 semi-final running order announcement will take place? Let us know your predictions at @ESCXTRA!
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