The draw for allocating the countries that will compete in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals will be held today at 19:00 PM CET in Malmo. The draw will be streamed live via YouTube.

The Host Insignia Handover Ceremony will be held prior to the Semi-final Allocation Draw in Malmo.

Both the Semi-final Allocation Draw and the Host Insignia Ceremony will be conducted by Pernilla Månsson Colt and Farah Abadi.

Host Insignia Handover Ceremony

The  Metro Mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotheram, will officially hand over the keys to the Mayor of  Malmo, Ms. Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh.

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

The ceremony will be carried out in the presence of Mr. Martin Osterdahl (Eurovision Song Contest Executive Supervisor) who will give a short speech on behalf of the EBU.

How to watch?

You can watch the Semi-final Allocation Draw live at 19:00 PM CET via the following channels:

• Eurovision Official YouTube Channel
• SVT Play
• SVT 2
• BBC iPlayer

Pot distribution

The 31 semi-final competing countries have been divided and distributed into 6 pots specially for the draw.

The distribution of the countries in the 5 pots has been based on the voting pattern in each country in the past  years. This mechanism is used in order to avoid neighborly 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
• Austria
• Switzerland
• Croatia
• Serbia
• Slovenia

Pot 2

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

Pot 3

• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Georgia
• Israel
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Ukraine

Pot 4

• Cyprus
• Greece
• Malta
• Ireland
• Portugal
• San Marino

Pot 5

• Belgium
• Czechia
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• Moldova
• Poland

Semi-final Allocation Draw

A total 31 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.

Sixteen countries will compete in one semi-final whilst fifteen countries will compete in the other semi-final  The draw will be supervised by the Eurovision Song Contest Executive Supervisor Mr. Martin Osterdahl.

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 + Sweden semi-final draw

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

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

Eurovision 2024

A total of 37 countries will compete at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo next May. 31 countries will compete in the semi-finals, whilst 26 countries will compete in the Grand Final.

The exact running order of the 31 countries competing in the 2 semi-finals on 07 and 09 May will be determined by the producers of the show by late March.

The Big 5 (Spain, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy) and Sweden are automatically qualified to compete in the Grand Final on 11 May.

The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest is scheduled to be held on  07, 09, and 11  May at the Malmo Arena in Malmo, Sweden.

Cover photo credit: EBU/SVT