The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) held this Tuesday in Malmö, the host city of the Eurovision 2024 festival, the distribution draw for the 31 countries that will compete in the two semi-finals on May 7 and 9 to advance to the grand finale. end of May 11. A total of 37 countries compete, of which six go directly to the final: the so-called Big Five (Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom) and Sweden as the host country.

A draw was also made in which semi-final those six countries will vote in: Spain was lucky to vote in the second semi-final along with Italy and France. In the first qualifying gala, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany will vote.

The draw was held during a live program on Swedish public television SVT titled The Draw, presented by Pernilla Månsson Colt, who also oversaw the allocation draw in 2013, and Farah Abadi. The draw also randomly assigned whether a country performs in the first or second half of the semi-final that was assigned to it by draw.

For the draw procedure in Malmö, it was initially distributed, as usual, to all countries in five pots based on historical voting patterns in the contest, because “drawing countries from different pots helps reduce the possibilities of the so-called vote between neighbors and increases the suspense in the semifinals,” according to the EBU.

This is the distribution of countries in the two semifinals; In the first, 15 countries will compete, and in the second there will be 16.

First half:

1. Ukraine

2. Cyprus

3. Poland

4. Serbia

5. Lithuania

6. Croatia

7. Ireland

Second half:

8. Slovenia

9. Iceland

10. Finland

11. Portugal

12. Luxembourg

13. Australia

14. Azerbaijan

15. Moldavia

First half:

1. Austria

2. Malta

3. Switzerland

4. Greece

5. Czech Republic

6. Albania

7. Denmark

8. Armenia

Second half:

9. Israel

10. Estonia

11. Georgia

12. Netherlands

13. Norway

14. Latvia

15. San Marino

16. Belgium

Israeli public television, KAN, requested that its representative be able to act in the second semifinal due to having a religious holiday on May 7; She drew lots in which half she would do it, and it was her turn to perform in the second half of said semifinal.

Before the draw, Steve Rotheram, mayor of Liverpool, the British city that hosted the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of the winner Ukraine, handed the Eurovision key to the mayor of Malmö, Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, as is tradition.