The draw for the running order of the participants of the 48th Eurovision Song Contest took place at noon in the studio of LTV, the Latvian host broadcaster for the upcoming event. The results were secret until 16:00 GMT so are now allowed to be published. In the meantime, the fans of the contest suffered a hard time…

The 48th Eurovision Song Contest will open with Iceland. The so called bad luck position, the second one, is for Austria this year. The first part of the contest will be closed by Israel, which will enter the stage as 13th. The second part will be opened by The Netherlands. Ukraine, the only new participating country this year, will perform as 16th. Host country Latvia was drawn 21st and the country will close with Slovenia on the 26th position.

Our reporter Aija Medinika was present at the draw, which was part of a small show, where the hosts were introduced to. Renard Kaupers and Marie N will take care of the presentation at May 24th. Rumours already told us since the day after the Eurovision victory of Latvia. During the show, one host opened shells with the country names in it while the other took pearls from a bin with a number on it. The last country was drawn by the Eurovision Song Contest responsible from the European Broadcasting Union, Sarah Yuen. Afterward she read the whole list again.

Click here to open the video of the draw show.