On Monday the 28th of January, the Eurovision 2019 Semi-Final Allocation Draw will take place, where each of the participating nations will be allocated to either the first semi-final to take place on the 14th of May, or the second on the 16th of May.
The event will take place at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and will begin with the Host City Insignia Exchange between last year’s host Lisbon to this year’s host city, Tel Aviv. The hosts of the draw will be Assi Azar and Lucy Ayoub who were recently announced as part of the hosting team for Eurovision 2019.
How does the draw work?
The first part of the draw will feature the Big 5 and host nation, where they will be allocated a semi-final to broadcast and vote in. These countries are France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK and host country Israel.
Then, the remaining nations will be allocated into a semi-final as well as the half in which the nation will perform in. As with previous years, the producers will have the final decision on the running order.
The 36 semi-finalists have been allocated into six pots based on historical voting patterns. Drawing from the pots helps to reduce the chance of ‘neighbourly’ voting and increases suspense in the semi-finals. Here are the allocation pots:
Pot 1
- Albania
- Croatia
- Y.R. Macedonia
- Montenegro
- Serbia
- Slovenia
Pot 2
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- Iceland
- Norway
- Sweden
Pot 3
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Georgia
- Russia
- Ukraine
Pot 4
- Australia
- Ireland
- Lithuania
- Latvia
- Poland
- Portugal
Pot 5
- Austria
- Belgium
- Czech Republic
- Hungary
- The Netherlands
- Switzerland
Due to the request of SRF and approved by the Reference Group Switzerland will participate in the second Semi-Final.
Pot 6
- Cyprus
- Greece
- Malta
- Moldova
- Romania
- San Marino
The Allocation draw will take place at 17:00 CET and will be broadcast on the official Eurovision YouTube channel!