It’s only a few days now until the EBU host the semi-final allocation draw live from Rotterdam City Hall on Tuesday 28th January, and now we know which countries will be in each pot!

In a change to recent years, the number of pots has been reduced from six down to five, meaning each pot will now have seven countries in it. The pots have been decided based on historical voting patterns with the draw intended to reduce the chance of neighbourly voting and to increase suspense.

The five pots are:

Pot 1:

• Albania
• Austria
• Croatia
• North Macedonia
• Serbia
• Slovenia
• Switzerland

Pot 2:

• Australia
• Denmark
• Estonia
• Finland
• Iceland
• Norway
• Sweden

Pot 3:

• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Belarus
• Georgia
• Moldova
• Russia
• Ukraine

Pot 4:

• Bulgaria
• Cyprus
• Greece
• Malta
• Portugal
• Romania
• San Marino

Pot 5:

• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• Ireland
• Israel
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Poland

There are some odd changes to the normal pots; most notably Moldova & Romania not being together, and Estonia being separated from the other Baltic states.

You can tune in live on YouTube at 16:30 CET on Tuesday 28th January to watch Edsilia Rombley, Chantal Janzen & Jan Smit host the draw. Whilst we won’t find out the exact running order, we will discover which countries will perform in each half of each semi final.