The Semi Finals were introduced into Eurovision in 2004 as a way of ensuring that countries that wished to participate could take part. The final of the contest is limited to the Big 5 and Host nation plus 20 additional countries, these 20 countries are selected from the two semi finals one of which is taking place tonight.
The countries are drawn into a semi final from 6 pots which were calculated by looking at past voting patterns, from these pots 2 countries were selected for each semi final. However due to their being 31 countries wishing to take part on top of the 6 countries already in the final, there are 16 countries in semi final 1 and 15 in semi final 2.
In tonight’s semi final which is semi final 2 the competing countries are:
- Malta – Firelight – Coming Home
- Israel – Mei Finegold – Same Heart
- Norway – Carl Espen – Silent Storm
- Georgia – The Shin & Mariko – Three Minutes To Earth
- Poland – Donatan & Cleo – My Slowianie – We Are Slavic
- Austria – Conchita Wurst – Rise Like A Pheonix
- Lithuania – Vilijia – Attention
- Finland – Softengine – Something Better
- Ireland – Can Linn feat Kasey Smith – Heartbeat
- Belarus – TEO – Cheesecake
- Macedonia – Tijana – To The Sky
- Switzerland – Sebalter – Hunter Of Stars
- Greece – Freaky Fortune feat RiskyKidd – Rise Up
- Slovenia – Tinkara Kovac – Round and Round
- Romania – Paula Seling & Ovi – Miracle
All of these 15 countries will vote in the semi final via a public televote, a further 3 countries will also vote in the show they are Germany, Italy and United Kingdom. These 3 countries vote in this semi final as each Big 5 country plus the host must vote in one of the two semi finals.
However it is not just the televoters at home that decide the votes. A jury from each of the 18 countries voting in the show also casts their vote, these juries are made up of 5 music professionals. The overall vote of a country is then calculated by adding these scores together. The country that ranks 10th receives 1 point, while the country that ranks 1st receive 12 points. These points are not announced on the night.
The 10 qualifiers are then selected from all of the countries votes combined. These 10 qualifiers are announced at random by the hosts and will go onto to the final on Saturday night where they will compete to win Eurovision 2014. The countries which are left behind are still eligible to vote in the final and will announce their points on the Saturday night with all of the other 37 participating countries.
