2018

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Location
Straight after the victory in the previous edition, announced that they would host this edition. They said that they were in touch with some

Number of participants
Since the seventh edition the EBU announced to put a maximum at the number of participants. In the seventh and eighth edition, eighteen countries were able to participate.

Because the introduction of the semi finals, there is no maximum of participating countries. However, since the seventeenth edition the EBU announced that they would put a new maximum of countries. This meant that 41 countries were able to sign for a participation. This means that each semi final would have 20 countries, plus the host nation (who qualify automatically). Until now, they never reached this limit.

Running order
There are specific rules about how a country gets his running order.

The host country will have a random number. The rest of the countries will be split in to groups (first- and second half). This will happen fully random. Later on, a team will create a running order to make the show as interesting as possible.

Song
Each country sends one song to the contest. There are no rules about the language of the song, but the song can't be longer than five minutes.

Voting rules
After that all the participating countries have sang their song, each single country awards a set of points. The country who gets the most amount of points wins the contest. If two or more countries receive the same number of points, the country that received from the most countries points, will be ranked higher. If that is also the same, then the country who have the highest rank of a country, will be ranked higher.

12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points received:

12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points received:

12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points received:

Returning countries

 * Italy.jpg Italy - The Italian broadcaster announced to return to the contest.

Withdrawing countries

 * Netherlands.jpg Netherlands - This country wasn't on the official list of participating countries, published by the EBU. Until now, they took part in every edition.
 * Poland.jpg Poland - The Polish broadcaster decided to withdraw from the contest, due to a lack of interest from the Polish public.

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