Months of preparations are over, and twenty-six acts stand before the starting blocks. With just a few hours to go until curtain-up on the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, how are the bookies seeing the race?

The top three favourites have been remarkably stable over the past week, with Italy leading, and France and Malta vying for second and third position, often switching places. France has tightened its hold on second favourite now, very close behind Italy, with Malta drifting into a slightly more distant third. That said, Italy is by no means on what might be considered ‘dead cert‘ odds at this point, suggesting that there is still all to play for.

Ukraine lies just behind Malta, with Switzerland a short way behind completing the top five. After that, we have four more of Thursday’s successful semifinalists: Iceland, Finland, Portugal and San Marino, with Tuesday’s Lithuania hanging on in tenth. Perhaps the most surprising shake-up is the drop of Bulgaria into eleventh favourite, and the drift of Cyprus into twelfth; both had formerly enjoyed top five favourite positions. Greece also drifts, having once challenged for the bottom half of the top ten.

Bookies’ Top Ten Pre-Final

The pre-final favourites, aggregated across bookies, are as follows:

1. Italy
2. France
3. Malta
4. Ukraine
5. Switzerland
6. Iceland
7. Finland
8. Portugal
9. San Marino
10. Lithuania

Have the bookies got it right this year? With an almost perfect scorecard of 9/10 on both semifinal qualification results, their game seems to be on point this year. However, there is always room for a surprise outsider…

In just a few hours we will all have the answer.