Eurovision Song Contest 2025 - Mod warning in the OP

It's not rubbish - Children can't even enjoy a simple concert, that has family friendly songs

I don't need to see boys in skirts singing - if they're born as boys - then dress like you're supposed to be.

or people can wear whatever the **** they want.

More Austrian dance! 😎

Fitting, given the radioactive levels of Italian stereotyping we saw this year by the likes of Estonia and San Marino.

MAMMA MIA! 😀

For several reasons, I still haven't watched the grand final. I have been looking at the semi-final results, and if anyone is interested, here are my thoughts on the semis.

I'll start with SF2 as that was the one we were in:

• Ireland continues its run of either never scraping into the final (i.e., finishing 10th in our semi) or just missing out on a final place (i.e., finishing 11th in our semi.) I know Sinead Mulvey finished 11th in her semi in 2009, but that year only the top 9 were guaranteed a place in the final, so she didn't "just miss out."
• Conversely, Serbia has ended its tradition of just missing out on the final when it doesn't qualify. In its previous three non-qualifications, it had finished just one spot outside a qualifying spot - 10th in 2009, 11th in 2013 and 11th in 2017. Mila was well out of the running in 14th place, a deserved result for what I considered the worst Serbian entry in years. I thought Princ might have been saved by the diaspora vote (and he had a good running order position), but other than the guaranteed 12 points from Montenegro and 10 from Austria, no one really showed any interest.
• I've been saying since March that people had been writing off Latvia too easily. It was very much in the likely/definite non-qualifier category, but I thought it had a shot. I did not expect, however, that it would finish second in its semi. It seems most of those who voted for it on Thursday didn't feel as strongly about it on Saturday and it only finished 16th in the televote.
• I had written off Montenegro and Georgia as no-hopers (as had most people.) This turned out to be an accurate prediction.
• Austria finished fifth in the semi - perhaps not a massive surprise, considering it was always seen as more jury-friendly, but still low for the song that ultimately won. It's not unusual for the overall winner not to win its semi, back at the first semi in 2004, Ukraine was beaten into second by Serbia & Montenegro, but until Nemo won last year, no one had ever won without coming at least third in their semi (Nemo was fourth in their semi.) JJ was more popular in the final, finished fourth with the public.
• Denmark made the final for the first time this decade (though Fyr og Flamme were robbed.)

I have fewer thoughts on SF1:

• I loved Tutta l'Italia from Sanremo and was delighted when San marino chose it for Basel. I predicted SM would get its best ever result with this, but it ended up being far off the pace, only scraping into the final with two points to spare over Cyprus. As I said in a previous post, staging DJ act is always tricky as the "star" is stuck behind decks (doing nothing, since all music is pre-recorded) and it was clear from rehearsals that it was going nowhere. But for a microstate like San Marino, just qualifying is a good result.
• We need to talk about Ukraine. I was shocked to see that Bird of Prey won its semi. We all know that Ukraine, even before the war, qualifies every year, but Bird of Prey was the weakest Ukrainian song since 2017, so while there's no point arguing whether or not it should have qualified, I think you can argue that it wasn't a deserved semi-final winner. For what it's worth, Bird of Prey grew on me in the leadup to the contest, but most people heard it only once so most of its votes must have some from diaspora or as a show of support. The juries kept it down in the grand final, but it finished only 20 points behind JJ in the public vote. This might be a controversial point, but might it be time to expand the final to 27 countries (wouldn't be unprecedented, 2015 had 27 countries) and give Ukraine an automatic grand final place? It's a handicap for any other country that's drawn in the same semi as Ukraine, knowing that there's realistically only nine slots available.

Ukraine - you seem to be ruling out the chance of people actually liking their song. I first heard their song during the semi final and had it as my favourite from that night. It ended up being my 5th favourite on final night.

For me it’s Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Latvia, Belgium, France, Latvia in that order.

Finland's staging was a bit too on the nose I think. Way over the top. The song itself was bang average so it was very reliant on the staging.

Yeah that's exactly it, pulling off a stunt like this would cost a small fortune at a time when their war is costing them a large fortune. It doesn't surprise me that Israel got so many votes with all the anti-Israel crowd boycotting the competition because then it's the pro-Israel crowd are the ones that will be watching and voting

If we really want to stick it to Israel we need to bring the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation into the EBU and the Eurovision

In the same way as Ukraine are actively taking part despite a threat of being blown to pieces next week I don't think the Palestinians would be quite as put off

The EBU doesn't allow countries to be kicked out for being at war and changing it now would be seen as antisemetic

For a start North Korea don't recognise Israel so they're unlikely to get into a league with them

The murdering of civilians and everything else you mentioned is auful, but for eurovision you need to set aside all of that. If you removed countries just for partaking in a war you would have very few countries some years.

Which is auful, but not a reason to kick them from the EBU