Yesterday evening the dress rehearsal for the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 was held in Kyiv, before the live show tonight. These dress rehearsals are of big importance, as the national juries decide about their rating, which counts as the 50% of the final result.

However, some minor problems had arisen with a few jury members in 5 countries. After the replacement of the Norwegian jury member Per Sundnes, after his negative comments on Brendan Murray and Ireland’s entry, an Australian judge was replaced too by the EBU. Before the dress rehearsal yesterday, Jordan Raskopoulos was replaced by Natasha Cuppit. However, the EBU has not specified the reasons yet.

This marks the 5th replacement of a national jury member, before the 1st semi-final. The 5 countries which changed one of their 5 members are Australia, Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland and Austria.

The 1st semi-final will be taking place tonight at 21:00 CET at the IEC in Kyiv, Ukraine.