The Grand Final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest will take place on May 13th in the International Exhibition Centre of Kyiv, Ukraine. Forty-two artists will take to the stage over three nights to perform their contributions for the contest, fighting to become the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017. Over the next week, all of the artists will have the chance to rehearse on stage and make any last minute changes to their performance before the live broadcasts. Today, nine more countries are rehearsing for the first time, these countries are performing in the first half of semi-final two.
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14:55 CET // The second break is now over, Denmark and Ireland are the only two countries still to perform. Once Ireland has finished on stage, the team in the arena will break for an evening meal before beginning lighting tests. The presenters will rehearse during this time, as will interval acts. All rehearsals are followed by makeup consultations, a chance to view the performance in the ‘Viewing Room’ to make changes, and a press conference. Press conferences will take place 2h20m after the end of the on-stage rehearsal, lasting twenty minutes. All artists will spend six hours in the building.
Denmark: First Rehearsal
15:05 CET // Australian-born Anja Nissen will be representing her parents’ home country, Denmark, at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Last year she finished second in the country’s national final, Dansk Melodi Grand Prix, with ‘Never Alone’, this year she returned to the contest and won with the song, ‘Where I Am’. In 2014 she won the third series of the Voice Australia and has previously toured with Olly Murs.
15:05 CET // Denmark’s Anja Nissen performs in front of a purple LED back board, turning gold towards the end of the performance. In a stage show packed with pyrotechnics, Anja wears casual clothing today, saving her final outfit for a later rehearsal.
15:16 CET // Denmark’s odds have jumped in the last few minutes, there’s a chance that they’ll rise to become one of the top five bookies favourites by the end of the night.
15:28 CET // Fairly steady set of rehearsals, all going to plan. Assuming nothing goes wrong in the next few minutes, now it’s just a wait for Ireland to appear.
Ireland: First Rehearsal
15:40 CET // From the land that brought us Riverdance and a parade of victories in the 1990s is Brendan Murray. The former member of the boyband Hometown, Brendan was selected by X Factor’s Louis Walsh to represent his country. He’ll be taking to the stage with “Dying To Try” and aiming to bring his country back to the finals.
15:52 CET // Ireland’s Brendan Murray has now performed on stage, he stands in front of a digital mountain range shown on the LED back board, above him, hanging from the chandelier is a large, red and white hot air balloon.
15:59 CET // That’s about it! Brendan’s rehearsal ran smoothly, although vocals were a little screechy towards the end of the performance on each occasion. Ireland were the last country to rehearse and therefore only nine semi-finalists are left to rehearse. The final rehearsals for the semi-finalists take place tomorrow from the usual time, 08:00 BST / 09:00 CET / 10:00 local.
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About the Eurovision Song Contest 2017
The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 will be the 62nd edition of the contest. It is to take place in the International Exhibition Centre in Kyiv, Ukraine. This is following the Ukrainian victory at the 2016 contest, in which Jamala won with the song “1944”, which was performed in Crimean Tatar and English. This is the second time that the contest will be held in Kyiv, the first being in 2005. The contest will consist of two semi-finals on the 9th and 11th of May, and the Grand Final on 13th May 2017.
[tw-accordion class=””] [tw-accordion-section title=”Eurovision: How the Results Are Generated”] The winner will be selected in part by public voting on the night, and in part by a professional jury the day before. At last year’s contest in Stockholm, a new voting system (similar to that of Melodifestivalen) was introduced in which the televote and jury vote were split in order to create a more tense atmosphere and exciting end to the show. In previous years, the spokespersons from across Europe would reveal their nation’s top ten songs, announced from 1 point up to 7, followed by the famous 8,10 and 12 points. These results were the combined opinion of the voting public and professional jury. Each country’s points would be combined to reach a final result. Now, however, the spokespersons only reveal the top ten of the national jury, leaving the public vote until the end of the show. The public votes are assigned points from 1-8,10 and 12, before being added together to create a ‘pot’ of results. The public vote is now announced collectively awarding anywhere from ‘nil points’ to a maximum of 504 points, a total of 2436 points will be awarded by the public in May, as will 2436 points from the jury. The highest possible score any country could receive is 1008 points, on the basis that every country’s public vote and jury vote awarded the same nation 12 points.[/tw-accordion-section] [/tw-accordion]
How You Can Follow This Year’s Contest
Over the next two weeks we’ll be bringing you live blogs from all of the rehearsals at this year’s contest, kicking off at 09:00 CET this morning, with Robin Bengtsson from Sweden. Live blogs will keep you up to date with all of the rehearsals, the staging and the first impressions from Kyiv.
We’ll bring you up to date news from all of the latest goings on at the contest, expect all the details about the spokespersons, artists and the host city itself.
On May 7 our live commentary of the opening ceremony will return as well, with a number of our writers guiding you through the artists, songs and what to expect from the shows.
This year also sees Eurovoix joining forces with escXtra to bring you XtraVoix. XtraVoix is a daily podcast featuring writers from both sites who couldn’t make it out to Ukraine for the contest, we’ll give you our immediate thoughts on all the goings on.
To get the most out of our coverage of this year’s contest in Ukraine, make sure to follow us on all of our social media platforms. We’ll be running some special contests to win one-off prizes from some of these artists, so you need to pay close attention.
- Like us on Facebook
- Get all of the news straight to you Twitter feed by following Eurovoix
- Check out snippets of the goings on in Kyiv and unique content on Twitter by following Eurovoix Moments
- Who doesn’t love a nice picture? We’ll be posting summaries of the news and ourselves in Kyiv on Instagram
