The 26 countries competing to win the 63rd Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in the Grand Final on Saturday 12 May are now known, following two exciting Semi-Finals, hosted by Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP), in this year’s host city Lisbon, Portugal.

Australia, Denmark, Hungary, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden and Ukraine all qualified from the second Semi-Final held at the Altice Arena on Thursday 10 May.

Austria, Albania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Israel and Lithuania were all voted through from the first Semi-Final of the competition on Tuesday 8 May.

RTP is hosting its first Eurovision Song Contest following their win in 2017, 53 years after their debut in the event. 

The 20 Semi-Final qualifiers join France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, as well as hosts Portugal, who all have an automatic place in the Grand Final. The full list of competing songs and artists can be found at the official ESC website eurovision.tv.

The result of each Semi-Final was decided by adding together the votes of national juries in each participating nation with telephone votes from viewers.

43 EBU Members in total are taking part in this year’s competition. DG Noel Curran discusses how important the event is for them, hosts RTP and the EBU as a whole here.

Around 1,400 journalists from over 80 nations are in the host city Lisbon covering the world’s biggest non-sporting live television event.

“We have 26 great songs competing in the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final which will ensure a very exciting competition on Saturday night. The millions watching the world’s biggest live music show are promised a spectacular evening,” said Jon Ola Sand, Executive Supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest.

The Grand Final of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest will be broadcast in all 43 participating nations by EBU Members ORF (Austria), PTV (Armenia), RTSH (Albania), ICTIMAI (Azerbaijan), BTRC (Belarus), VRT (Belgium), RTBF (Belgium), BNT (Bulgaria), HRT (Croatia), CyBC (Cyprus), ČT (Czech Republic), DR (Denmark), ERR (Estonia), YLE (Finland), GPB (Georgia), ARD (Germany), ERT (Greece), MTV (Hungary), RÚV (Iceland), RTÉ (Ireland), IBA (Israel), RAI (Italy), LTV (Latvia), LRT (Lithuania), RTCG (Montenegro), MRT (FYR Macedonia), PBS (Malta), TRM (Moldova), RTCG (Montenegro), AVROTROS (The Netherlands), NRK (Norway), TVP (Poland), RTP (Portugal), TVR (Romania), Channel One (Russia), SMRTV (San Marino), RTS (Serbia), RTVSLO (Slovenia), RTVE (Spain), SVT (Sweden), SRG SSR (Switzerland), NTU (Ukraine), BBC (United Kingdom) and Associate Member SBS (Australia).

The 3.5 hour Grand Final will also be broadcast live in Kosovo, Kazakhstan and in the United States for the third consecutive year on Logotv as well as the official Youtube channel.

185 million people saw last year’s Eurovision Song Contest from Kyiv.