The second of two Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals took place on Thursday in Liverpool, northern England.
10 countries qualified for the Grand Final to take place on Saturday night, where they will join the 10 countries who triumphed in the first semi-final on Tuesday, along with Ukraine and ‘the big 5’ – Spain, Italy, France, Germany and UK. 26 countries in total will be competing at the Grand Final.
The UK is hosting the 67th Contest on behalf of Ukraine, who won in 2022 but were unable to accommodate proceedings this year due to the war. As on Tuesday night’s first semi-final, the hosts for the second semi-final were Ukrainian singer Julia Sanina and Brits Hannah Waddingham and Alesha Dixon.
The interval act on Thursday evening brought together different generations of Ukrainian music. Ukraine’s 2014 winner Mariya Yaremchuk performed well-known pieces of music from her country, before she was joined by rapper OTOY and Zlata Dziunka (Ukraine Junior Eurovision 2022).
By the end of the voting on Thursday, the six countries whose low votes (a public vote, not by jury at this stage for the first time this year) saw them knocked out of the contest were: Denmark, Romania, Iceland, Greece, Georgia and San Marino.
Countries who went through on Thursday night included:
Armenia, Estonia, Belgium, Cyprus, Poland, Slovenia, Austria, Albania, Lithuania and Australia.
The Grand Final lineup is now complete with 26 countries taking part as follows:
Ukraine; UK; France; Germany; Italy; Spain; Norway; Serbia; Portugal; Croatia; Switzerland; Israel; Moldova; Sweden; Czechia; Finland; Albania; Cyprus; Estonia; Belgium; Austria; Lithuania; Poland; Australia; Armenia; Slovenia.
