EuroMusic Song Contest 26

The EuroMusic Song Contest 26 was the twenty sixth edition of the EuroMusic Song Contest. The host country was Azerbaijan, that won the previous edition, with the song Drip drop. This was the second time that Azerbaijan hosted this contest.

Poland won the contest for the second time. They took the victory with the bilingual song "I'll be standing". It the first time since the Bulgarian victory in the twentieth edition that the winning song contained non-English lyrics. Malta and Australia completed the top three.

Location
After the Azerbaijani victory in the previous edition, İTV announced that they would host this edition. They started to nagotiate with the EBU.

Later on, the Azerbaijani broadcaster announced that they chosed Baku as host city. They decided to host the edition in the Heydar Aliyev Sports and Concert Complex. This venue has a capacity of 8.000 spectators.

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.

Because of the limited number of participants, there was no semi final.

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.

Returning artists
The contest featured four representatives who also previously performed as lead vocalists for the same countries.

Scoreboard
https://scorewiz.eu/scoreboard/view/363668/euromusic-song-contest-26--grand-final

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

Returning countries

 * Ireland.jpg Ireland
 * San Marino.jpg San Marino

Withdrawing countries

 * Czech Republic.jpg Czech Republic
 * Latvia.jpg Latvia