The draw for allocating the countries that will compete in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals will be held today at 13:00 CET at Lisbon’s City Hall. The draw will be streamed live via YouTube.

The Host Insignia Handover Ceremony will be held prior to the Semi-final Allocation Draw at Camara Municipal de Lisboa’s Salão Nobre (Noble Hall).

Both the Semi-final Allocation Draw and the Host Insignia Ceremony will be conducted by Filomena Cautela and Silvia Alberto (Eurovision 2018 hostesses). Nuno Galopim and Jose Carlos Malato will be the commentating the event on RTP 1 for the Portuguese viewers.

Host Insignia Handover Ceremony

The Mayor of Kyiv, Mr. Mr. Vitali Klitschko, will officially hand over the keys to the Mayor of Lisbon, Mr. Fernando Medina, at Lisbon’s City Hall-Camara Municipal de Lisboa.

A grand ceremony has been organized for the occasion, where Lisbon will officially take over from Kyiv as the Eurovision host city.

The ceremony will be carried out in the presence of Mr. Jon Ola Sand (EBU’s executive supervisor for the Eurovision Song Contest) who will give a short speech on behalf of the EBU.

How to watch?

You can watch the Semi-final Allocation Draw live at 13:00 CET via the following channels:

• Eurovision.tv YouTube Channel
• RTP 1 Webstream
• RTP 1
  
• RTP Africa
• RTP International Europe (via satellite – Eutelsat Hot Bird 13 C )

Pot distribution

The 37 semi-final competing countries have been divided and distributed into 6 pots specially for the draw.

The distribution of the countries in the 6 pots has been based on the voting pattern in each country in the past  years. This mechanism is used in order to avoid neighbourly voting and countries that tend to vote for each another ending up competing in the same Semi-final.

Which country is in which pot?

• Pot 1: Albania, Switzerland, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, FYR Macedonia
  
• Pot 2: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Sweden
• Pot 3: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine
  
• Pot 4: Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Moldavia, Bulgaria
  
• Pot 5: Israel, Australia, Czech Republic, Malta, Austria, San Marino
  
• Pot 6: Belgium,  The Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland

Semi-final Allocation Draw

A total 37 countries have been distributed into 6 pots and will be allocated into one of the 2 semi-finals by a draw. The first draw will determine which country will compete in which semi-final.

Nineteen countries will compete in the first semi-final on 8 May, whilst 18 countries will compete in the second semi-final on 10 May. The draw will be supervised by EBU’s Executive Supervisor Mr. Jon Ola Sand.

Another draw will determine the appearance of the country in its respective semi-final (1st half or 2nd half of the semi-final).

Big 5 and Portugal voting in semi-final draw

The Big 5 (Italy, France, UK, Spain and Germany) countries and host country Portugal will vote in the semi-finals too.

A draw will also determine which country will vote in which semi-final.

Eurovision 2018

A total of 43 countries will compete at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest in Lisbon next May. 37 countries will compete in the semi-finals, whilst 26 countries will compete in the Grand Finale.

The exact running order of the 37 countries competing in the 2 semi-finals on 8 and 12 will be determined by the producers of the show by late March.

The Big 5 (Spain, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy) and Portugal (the host country) are automatically qualified to compete in the Grand Final on 12 May.

The 2018 Eurovision Song Contest is scheduled to be held on 8, 10 and 12  May at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.