Today the 2013 Eurovision Semi-finals allocation draw will take place and will be streamed live on the Eurovision Song Contest’s official website and SVT’s official website.

This draw will be held at the Old City Hall in Malmö at 14.00 CET and will determine which countries will compete in which Semi-final. The 2013 Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals are scheduled to be held on the 14 and 16 May in Malmö.

How to watch the draw?

1. You can watch the draw live on the official website of the Eurovision Song Contest by clicking here .
2. You can also watch the draw live on SVT’s official website.
3. Montenegro will also be airing the draw live on RTCG 1 and RTCG Sat via satellite (Eutelsat 16A)

The Agenda

This year there will be no draw to determine the running order of the participating countries for either the Semi-finals or the Final of the Eurovision Song Contest. The running order for all 3 shows will be decided and determined by the host broadcaster SVT.

A draw will also be held to decide and allocate the so-called Big 5 (Italy, France, UK, Germany, Spain) and Sweden (the host country) into one of the two Semi-finals (determining which semi-final each country will vote in and broadcast). The Host City Insignia ceremony will be held on the same day, where the previous year’s mayor will hand over the symbolic key to the mayor of Malmö. 16 countries will compete in Semi-final 1 and 17 countries will compete in Sem-ifinal 2.

A total of 39 countries will be competing at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. The Big 5 countries+ the host country Sweden qualify directly to the Final and do not compete in the Semi-finals, thus this leaves us with 33 countries to compete in the semifinal. Denmark and Norway have already been allocated to compete in the first and second Semi-Finals respectively, hence we will know in which half of the shows they’ll be drawn. Israel has been allocated in Semi-Final 2 due to a national holiday on the 14th of May. This leaves us with 30 countries which have been allocated in 5 different pots based on the voting patterns from the past 9 years. The pots were calculated by the televoting partner Digame.

 

Pot 1		Pot 2		Pot 3		Pot 4		Pot 5
[Albania]	Albania	[Estonia]	Estonia	[Armenia]	Armenia	[Bulgaria]	Bulgaria	[Austria]	Austria
[Croatia]	Croatia	[Finland]	Finland	[Azerbaijan]	Azerbaijan	[Belgium]	Belgium	[Hungary]	Hungary
[FYR Macedonia]	FYR Macedonia	[Iceland]	Iceland	[Belarus]	Belarus	[Cyprus]	Cyprus	[Moldova]	Moldova
[Montenegro]	Montenegro	[Ireland]	Ireland	[Georgia]	Georgia	[Greece]	Greece	[Romania]	Romania
[Serbia]	Serbia	[Latvia]	Latvia	[Russia]	Russia	[Malta]	Malta	[San Marino]	San Marino
[Switzerland]	Switzerland	[Lithuania]	Lithuania	[Ukraine]	Ukraine	[The Netherlands]	The Netherlands	[Slovenia]	Slovenia

 

Stay tuned to esctoday.com for the latest information on the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest.