Netherlands, Sweden and Russia make the cut after semi final 2

As expected, title candidates The Netherlands, Sweden and Russia have qualified for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019. They were part of the ten best scoring acts of the semi final on Thursday.

The biggest surprise of the night was arguably the qualification of Albania. North Macedonia made it to the final for the first time since 2007 and Switzerland will be seen on Saturday for the first time since 2014. Armenia and Romania had their second non-qualification in a row, which never happened top them before.

Here are the ten qualifiers of the second semi final of 2019:

North Macedonia – Tamara Todevska with Proud (first half)
The Netherlands – Duncan Laurence with Arcade (first half)
Albania – Jonida Maliqi with Ktheju tokës (first half)
Sweden – John Lundvik with Too Late For Love (first half)
Russia – Sergey Lazarev with Scream (first half)
Azerbaijan – Chingiz with Truth (second half)
Denmark – Leonora with Love Is Forever (first half)
Norway – KEiiNO with Spirit In The Sky (second half)
Switzerland – Luca Hänni with She Got Me (second half)
Malta – Michela with Chameleon (first half)

The running order for the grand final will be decided later tonight, as these ten qualified acts have drawn their allocations in either the first, or the second half of the show.

Jury winner of last year eliminated in 2019

Eight countries – Armenia, Ireland, Moldova, Latvia, Romania, Austria, Croatia and Lithuania – didn’t make it past the second semi final. Among them is Austria, the country that won the jury vote at the Eurovision Song Contest 2018. Other finalists of last year, that failed to qualify this time are Ireland, Moldova and Lithuania.

For Armenia, Croatia and Romania, it is the second non-qualification in a row. This especially hurts in Romania, a country that had a 1005 track record of qualifying from the semi finals up till 2018. Latvia is having the worst streak from all these non-qualifiers, making this the third year in a row missing out on the final.