Our XTRA running order of Eurovision 2026

With the month of March coming to an end and the first pre-parties already starting, we are eagerly awaiting the reveal of the running orders for both Eurovision semi-finals. In the meantime, our editors Timothy and Vincent came up with their own running orders!

What we took into account

In order to create our running orders, we took into account the allocation draw and its requirements: countries are placed in the correct semi-final and “half” of their allocated night. Automatic qualifiers are also placed in the running order.

Like the Contest producers, we strived to create an order that should keep viewers interested, with an interesting “flow” of songs, and with some stories to tell. We also kept in mind the logistics of stage props, but with only limited information on the topic, it was not an important criterion.

With this in mind, let’s discover our XTRA Running Orders below!

Semi-final 1: from Moldova to Montenegro, a tale of two halves

Our running order

1. 🇲🇩 Moldova – “Viva Moldova!”
2. 🇬🇪 Georgia – “Play Back”
3. 🇭🇷 Croatia – “Andromeda”
4. 🇬🇷 Greece – “Ferto”
5. 🇵🇹 Portugal – “Rosa”
6. 🇫🇮 Finland – “Liekinheitin”
   Automatic qualifier – 🇩🇪 Germany – “Fire”
7. 🇸🇪 Sweden – “My System”
8. 🇧🇪 Belgium – “Dancing on the Ice”
9. 🇪🇪 Estonia – “Too Epic To Be True”
10. 🇱🇹 Lithuania – “Sólo quiero más”
11. 🇮🇱 Israel – “Michelle”
    Automatic qualifier – 🇮🇹 Italy – “Per Sempre Si”
12. 🇸🇲 San Marino – “Superstar”
13. 🇵🇱 Poland – “Pray”
14. 🇷🇸 Serbia – “Kraj Mene”
15. 🇲🇪 Montenegro – “Nova Zora”

The duality of the first semi-final

The allocation draw has been extremely harsh to the producers of the Contest this year, by filling the first half of the first semi-final with two televote favourites (Greece and Moldova) and two strong victory contenders (Finland and Sweden). These are four out of seven songs, with the potential to use an automatic qualifier to make it four out of eight.

It is necessary to separate these four songs: it is impossible to completely isolate them from each other, but it is what we strove to do.

But after this comes the second half, which is, musically, much less impactful than the first one, completing the duality of the show: a very strong first half, with a weaker second part.

Navigating the first half

• 1- 🇲🇩 Moldova – “Viva Moldova!”
• 2- 🇬🇪 Georgia – “Play Back”
• 3- 🇭🇷 Croatia – “Andromeda”
• 4- 🇬🇷 Greece – “Ferto”
• 5- 🇵🇹 Portugal – “Rosa”
• 6- 🇫🇮 Finland – “Liekinheitin”

Let’s consider the first half as having eight songs. These are:

• Sweden and Finland, two of the top contenders
• Greece and Moldova, two “televote bait” entries
• Georgia, a “slower” uptempo song with some JESC history
• Croatia, an “ethnic” entry
• Portugal, among the slowest entries this year
• and one of two automatic qualifiers: Italy or Germany

Portugal and Croatia have two very important roles here: slowing down the flow of the show, to balance all the dancing tracks populating the early spots of the night. Portugal in particular is an important piece as an “anchor”, a “reassuring” act for more traditional viewers: it needs to go after Greece or Moldova, which may be too loud and original for such viewers. It’s exactly the role that Latvia had in the 2024 Grand Final, with Dons reassuring them after Bambie Thug’s “Doomsday Blue” (which followed Estonia and Spain).

The opener needed to be one of the five uptempo songs and could not be an automatic qualifier. We selected Moldova, considering how engaging the entry is and how useful it would be, from a narrative standpoint, to start with a returning country: “Welcome Back, Moldova”, to which Satoshi would respond with a resounding “Welcome to Moldova”.

Georgia follows as it is up-tempo, though not as much as the rest, and brings some English language. Then Croatia slows it down and gets into a nice third spot, which is usual for these slower entries. We then get back into televote madness with Greece, after which Portugal is nicely slotted in as a reassurance piece, and with a contrast helping it shine.

This leaves us with the two favorites, Finland and Sweden, in spots #6 and #7 respectively. This is close and would have them next to each other in the recap, but we accept this. In the actual show, they would however be separated by Germany, which would follow a commercial break. This is in line with the last two years, when the first automatic qualifier would perform after the first commercial break, allowing the hosts to explain the concept.

The break would help viewers take in the very strong staging of Finland, and the general high tempos of the first six entries.

Sweden opening the second part of the show

• Automatic qualifier – 🇩🇪 Germany – “Fire”
• 7- 🇸🇪 Sweden – “My System”
• 8- 🇧🇪 Belgium – “Dancing on the Ice”
• 9- 🇪🇪 Estonia – “Too Epic To Be True”
• 10- 🇱🇹 Lithuania – “Sólo quiero más”
• 11- 🇮🇱 Israel – “Michelle”

After the break, Germany comes in to bring some energy back and ramps it up for Sweden to have it explode. In this situation, we considered that Finland’s “Liekinheitin” has a good energy buildup in and of itself, while Sweden’s “My System” would benefit from an entry warming up the crowd just before. In this situation, Sweden would also be used as the first entry of the second part of the show.

Then comes the official second half, which contains less contrast. We opted for a more classical flow of energy: lowering it with Belgium, then raising it with Estonia, lowering it with Lithuania, and back to some more energy with Israel. We are also expecting, perhaps wrongly, dark staging for both Essyla and Lion Ceccah, and something much brighter from Vanilla Ninja.

The final sequence

• Automatic qualifier – 🇮🇹 Italy – “Per Sempre Si”
• 12- 🇸🇲 San Marino – “Superstar”
• 13- 🇵🇱 Poland – “Pray”
• 14- 🇷🇸 Serbia – “Kraj Mene”
• 15- 🇲🇪 Montenegro – “Nova Zora”

Italy would follow the second commercial break, with the easy transition for the hosts: back into the show with an automatic qualifier, then back into the actual competition with San Marino, its neighbor. Although “Superstar” could be a finisher, we chose “Nova Zora” instead, considering it to be a more impactful track, and making it a favor after a very unhelpful second slot back in its 2025 semi-final.

The road to an impactful, up-tempo finisher can go two ways: you either ramp up the energy over a few songs for the finisher to be a pay-off (like in 2018’s second semi-final) or you put a slow song in the second-to-last spot (like in almost every semi-final these last few years). Serbia is a natural fit here, with its slow rock and dark staging, with “Kraj Mene” acting just like “Ulveham” did back in 2024, second-to-last before “Europapa” in the second semi-final. This leaves Poland in slot #13, with a vocal performance that should shine after Italy and San Marino, which do not have strong vocal moments.

Semi-final 2: From Bulgaria to Denmark

Our running order

1. 🇧🇬 Bulgaria – “Bangaranga”
2. 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan – “Just Go”
3. 🇱🇺 Luxembourg – “Mother Nature”
4. 🇦🇲 Armenia – “Paloma Rumba”
   Automatic qualifier – 🇦🇹 Austria – “Tanzschein”
5. 🇨🇿 Czechia – “Crossroads”
6. 🇨🇭 Switzerland – “Alice”
7. 🇷🇴 Romania – “Choke Me”
8. 🇺🇦 Ukraine – “Ridnym”
   Automatic qualifier – 🇫🇷 France – “Regarde”
9. 🇳🇴 Norway – “Ya Ya Ya”
10. 🇦🇺 Australia – “Eclipse”
11. 🇦🇱 Albania – “Nân”
12. 🇨🇾 Cyprus – “Jalla”
13. 🇱🇻 Latvia – “Ēnā”
    Automatic qualifier – 🇬🇧 United Kingdom – “Eins, Zwei, Drei”
14. 🇲🇹 Malta – “Bella”
15. 🇩🇰 Denmark – “Før vi går hjem”

A more flexible semi-final

Compared to the Tuesday show, this semi-final does not concentrate the “best” songs in the same half, and gives us three automatic qualifiers to place freely along the running order. If anything, the stronger songs are in the second half (Cyprus, Denmark, Australia, and one could argue for Ukraine too) but it has 8 slots in total (and up to 10 with the Big Four and hosts), and the songs themselves are less similar than, say, Greece and Moldova.

With these 18 songs and two commercial breaks, it is also much easier to think of the evening as being made of three parts instead of the classical two halves.

A classic opening

• 1- 🇧🇬 Bulgaria – “Bangaranga”
• 2- 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan – “Just Go”
• 3- 🇱🇺 Luxembourg – “Mother Nature”
• 4- 🇦🇲 Armenia – “Paloma Rumba”

We would open the second semi-final with Bulgaria’s “Bangaranga”, in a parallel to the choice of Moldova in the first semi-final: it’s a strong, engaging, uptempo entry coming from a returning country. And although it is not a massive part of our decision, its lyrics work wonders in this context: “No one’s gonna sleep tonight / Welcome to the riot!”.

We would then follow with a more classical contrast of a slow song (Azerbaijan) followed by something more mid-tempo and evocative with Luxembourg. Armenia would then close the first part of the evening with more energy, before the first commercial break.

Vocal performances in the second part

• Automatic qualifier – 🇦🇹 Austria – “Tanzschein”
• 5- 🇨🇿 Czechia – “Crossroads”
• 6- 🇨🇭 Switzerland – “Alice”
• 7- 🇷🇴 Romania – “Choke Me”
• 8- 🇺🇦 Ukraine – “Ridnym”
• Automatic qualifier – 🇫🇷 France – “Regarde !”
• 9- 🇳🇴 Norway – “Ya Ya Ya”

After returning for the host entry, we get back in the competition with three songs to close the official first half. Czechia comes first, with Daniel Žižka allowed to shine vocally, both in terms of performance and pitch, coming after Cosmó with his low voice register and a song that does not rely on huge vocal moments. We then put Switzerland for something lighter, leading us to Romania.

Just like Portugal in the first semi-final, Ukraine could work as a “reassurance” entry for more traditional viewers after the leather-clad, female-led rock performance of “Choke Me”, which would be reinforced by France.

Now, this sequence of Romania-Ukraine-France may not be ideal, since all three of these songs present strong, high-pitched female vocal moments. We believe it remains a good choice for two reasons:

• first, while the vocals in “Choke Me” and “Regarde !” may be seen as operatic at times, the high-pitched moments in “Ridnym” do not give the same vibes and will seem much more “folkloric” to the public
• second, the song that could potentially be harmed by this sequence is Ukraine, which we assume will continue to enjoy strong support from the televote, without too much handicap from the juries

We also generally believe that a “slow” song should follow Romania, and that a slow calm song should be put in slot #14 before the closing song. Only Ukraine, Latvia and Malta would fit (Albania being too bombastic for both slots), with the latter two being more in danger of non-qualification than Ukraine, thus prompting us to put them later in the order.

After France, we would get back in the competition with two strong entries: Norway (which will do very well with the crowd and may do better than expected in the televote) and Australia (which is a contender to win the jury vote during the semi-final). A commercial break would separate them in order to allow each of them to shine and to give Norway the position of a “closer” for the second part of the evening, thus giving Australia an “opener” position for the last sequence.

The way to Denmark, until we go home

• 10- 🇦🇺 Australia – “Eclipse”
• 11- 🇦🇱 Albania – “Nân”
• 12- 🇨🇾 Cyprus – “Jalla”
• 13- 🇱🇻 Latvia – “Ēnā”
• Automatic qualifier – 🇬🇧 United Kingdom – “Eins, Zwei, Drei”
• 14- 🇲🇹 Malta – “Bella”
• 15- 🇩🇰 Denmark – “Før vi går hjem”

The rest is a more classic set of alternating rhythms and atmospheres: Albania (slow and heavy, bombastic, likely dark and emotional in its staging), Cyprus (up-tempo, engaging the crowd, and expected to be brighter than Albania in its staging), Latvia (slow, emotional, dark), another automatic qualifier with the United Kingdom, leading us to the slower, romantic “Bella”.

While several other countries could have been used as finishers (Cyprus, Norway and even Australia), we feel like Denmark would be the best for this final slot. It would work musically (with an explosive finish to conclude the show), logistically (with the expectation of the glass box being used again: assuming it can be put in place fast enough after Malta. It would have more time to be removed after the performance). Thematically (partying long into the night before going back home) and even symbolically for the fans. This is like a reward for Denmark as a contender for victory after so many years of below-average results.

Our suggestion as we wait for the real thing

What we’ve shown is just our suggestion and ideal version. It likely suffers from some biases, it does not take into account the logistics of every staging, it makes assumptions on the atmospheres of some acts, and it is sometimes guided by “narrative” elements which may not necessarily be important to the Contest production team.

Other fans will have made their suggestions. OGAE France created their own running order for their annual previews, held last week-end, with some very different choices (closing the semi-finals with San Marino and Albania, or putting the slowest songs of each first half, namely Portugal and Azerbaijan, in slot #7, for example).

We should soon know the actual running orders and be ready for our analysis of the producers’ choices when it comes. But, we hope that our little exercise and the justifications that we gave you can also help you understand the challenges of this year’s running order, and the ebbs and flows of the decisions which will be made public soon.

Do you agree with our choices? What would you do differently? How would you manage the first half of the first semi-final, for example? Tell us more in the comments below, or on social media!

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