EDITORIAL – Europe (and Australia) have spoken and decided: 20 semi-finals are now Eurovision Song Contest finalists.

• Since Ukraine and Kalush Orchestra qualified for the Grand Final of Eurovision 2022, the country has been the only one to never fail to qualify for a Eurovision Final.
• The other competing nations have all failed to qualify at least once (for example, Australia), which raises the question: which countries have the greatest qualifying streak and which have the worst?
• Sweden is the first nation on the list (after Ukraine)… What a pleasant surprise! Only once has the Nordic nation failed to qualify for a Eurovision final. The year was 2010, and Anna Bergendahl entered her song “This Is My Life” in a competition… There were five more points required.
• Without Eurovision 2022, both Cyprus and Israel would have had honourable mentions, but both Andromache and Michael Ben David failed to qualify for the show’s Grand Final. The nice neighbours had a six-year qualifying run until yesterday.
• That leads us to the Netherlands, which hosted the tournament last year after Duncan Laurence’s 2019 triumph with “Arcade.” Since 2016, the nation has never missed a Eurovision final. Despite eight consecutive non-qualification from 2005 to 2013, the Dutch squad improved and has only failed to qualify once since.
• Norway now has a five-year qualifying strike with Subwoolfer’s qualification at this year’s Eurovision, closely followed by Serbia, which saw their number increase from three to four with Konstrakta’s recent qualification.

Being on this list is hardly an honour, but other nations have not been so fortunate.

• Despite not competing in Eurovision 2021, Montenegro hasn’t had a final since 2015, when Knez sang “Adio.” This is a five-year non-qualification skid for the Balkan nation since Vladana was unable to reverse the situation at this year’s competition.
• Georgia and Latvia had five unsuccessful attempts to qualify for the Eurovision Grand Final. Their most recent qualifying dates back to 2016 when Nika Kocharov and Young Georgian Lolitaz (Georgia 2016) and Justs (Latvia 2016) qualified.
• Finally, Croatia and Ireland have missed four and three finals in a straight, respectively. Croatia’s most recent qualifying was in Eurovision 2017, when Jacques Houdek sang “My Friend,” whilst Ireland’s most recent appearance in a Eurovision final was in Lisbon, when Ryan O’Shaughnessy (Ireland 2018) performed “Together.”
• Romania, who had a flawless qualifying run until 2018, would also be a possibility to be featured, but with WRS qualification for this year’s Grand Final, Romania may have to start again.

FUN(NY) FACTOIDS

• Systur placed higher than S!sters (3rd from the bottom to 2nd from the bottom), though S!sters scored more points.
• S10 and Monika Liu finished where they ended up in the starting order (11th and 14th respectively).
• Rosa Linn dropped from 105 televoting points in the semi to just 10 from the same set of countries (10 from Georgia and 1 from Cyprus in addition to that). And she wasn’t the highest-placed Armenian.
• Whenever Marvin Dietmann staged a German entry, it scored 6 points.
• Sweden almost broke the record for most points in a semifinal under the new system, just 7 points off Bulgaria in 2017.
• Latvia funnily scored more jury points than televoting points (Especially thanks to the veggie-loving jury in Portugal)

an oikotimes original text

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