After months of preparation, Eurovision week has finally come around. This year marks the most open contest in recent memory, with six entries I could make a realistic victory case for.

I have run thousands of simulations of my forecasting model, with the full results shown at the bottom of this article. First, though, let’s take a look at the contenders in more detail and some other points of interest from rehearsals.

The contenders

Croatia has been rewarded with a big boost this week after its main televote competitor fumbled somewhat in rehearsals. However, some concerns remain about a large jury score for Baby Lasagna and whether Croatia can achieve the requisite televote haul to make up for its jury deficit in a fairly open year and with most Balkan allies missing from this edition. In Croatia’s favour, though, is the hosting angle – having next year’s contest in the Balkans may see some familiar faces return to the contest, which would be a boon for the contest financially. As a result, Baby Lasagna may end up being rewarded with a prime running order spot in the final.

For me, Switzerland made the familiar mistake of Eurovision contenders in narrowing the entry’s appeal too much in its staging and not playing to a wider audience. Eurovision can be quite insular and being able to think outside the bubble is one of the keys to success. Despite impeccable vocals, the costuming looks like a major red flag for mass televote appeal, with Nemo looking completely swamped. If I were in charge of the Swiss team, I would have opted for a more slimline look, keeping the skirt as part of the silhouette but going for something more chic and powerful up top. Switzerland should still be racking up 200+ jury points on Saturday night, but we may end up seeing a surprisingly low televote score.

Ukraine was one of the big winners of rehearsal week, with the Ukrainian delegation once again demonstrating why they are the masters of contemporary staging in the contest. While we have only seen 30 seconds of the entry, the preview looks very promising.

Ukraine is unrivalled when it comes to communicating both slickness and warmth in the same package, fusing together the contemporary and the traditional to achieve mass appeal, reflecting the musical formula which has been so successful for them in recent years. I see Ukraine as one of two potential ‘compromise winners’ who could take the trophy despite not finishing top of the televote or jury vote.

For the last few months, Italy has been the entry which I’ve viewed as the most likely winner in this unpredictable year. While the staging has given me some pause for thought, the Italian team notably took on board constructive feedback from the first rehearsal and brightened up the overall package for their second run out — not something indicative of a country that doesn’t want to win again. The glimpse we got of the pyro curtain in the 30-second rehearsal clip also looks as close to a ‘winning moment’ as we’ve seen in this week’s rehearsals. For me, this is the only 2024 entry that ticks every box for a Eurovision winner: it has mass appeal with both the televote and jury, is from a country with plenty of televote allies and the capacity to host, and is delivered by a highly charismatic and confident performer. By no means would I make ‘La noia’ the runaway favourite, but for now, at least, it looks like the most logical victor given the information we have.

Despite liking the song on a personal level, I have not really rated the Netherlands’ prospects of a Eurovision victory this year, having not seen any evidence of geographically-efficient televote appeal to make up for what is likely to be a heavy jury deficit. From the 30-second rehearsal clips, I think the Dutch have pretty much ruled themselves out of contention. In my eyes, the overall package looks overly childlike, and I’m not sure the emotional epilogue works as intended, either. For an entry like this to win, it needs to create momentum from the semi-final and be something that seems cool to like and which people are proud to get behind. Joost showed the potential to create something like that in the music video, but the rehearsal clip gave shades of Pollapönk rather than Käärija, which is not a winning formula.

France basically delivered what was expected in the rehearsals. Slimane is one of the three major contenders for the jury win this year, alongside Nemo and Angelina Mango, but probably has the lowest televote appeal among the three. The second-half draw should help in this regard, and we can see how this goes down with casual viewers when performed in Thursday’s semi-final, but right now this looks like it will challenge for the top five rather than the overall win.

I outlined some of my thoughts on Israel’s participation on Twitter previously, so I won’t repeat all that here, but given that this will be perhaps the leading story among news outlets in Eurovision week, Israel must be discussed if we are talking about potential winners. Surprisingly, I have not seen much speculation about that possibility.

I have made this point time and time again over the years, but anti-voting in the Eurovision televote is basically impossible. To vote against an entry, one would have to vote 25 times to neutralise just one in the opposite direction. A strong Israel televote showing this year would therefore not necessarily be a reflection of highly-favourable public opinion, but rather the structure of the voting system combined with the increased levels of mobilisation and motivation for Israel’s supporters to vote this year. As a result, there is a realistic prospect of Eden Golan receiving a very large televote haul in the grand final. A viral #VoteForIsrael hashtag could easily see pro-Israel casuals get involved, too.

Let’s take a look at some numbers. Thankfully for this exercise, we have a recent example of geopolitics causing a seismic Eurovision result when Ukraine took home a mammoth televote score in 2022. While we don’t know exactly what share of the televote Kalush Orchestra received in each country, we do know that they topped the scoreboard in Italy with 30% of votes cast. Of course, the situation here is very different; Ukraine enjoyed almost overwhelming public support in 2022, whereas Israel is much more controversial, to say the least. Support for only Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict is around 20% in Western Europe, so the base of support is much lower (I think Ukraine would have been around 70% if the same question were asked in 2022).

If we do some back-of-the-envelope calculations and estimate that Ukraine got ~30% of the televote in 2022 from ~70% support, Israel would be looking at around ~9% of the overall televote from ~20% Israel-only support (assuming Israel supporters are as motivated as Ukraine’s were). While 9% does not sound like a lot, in ‘normal’ years the televote seems to have been much more tightly-bunched than one might expect, if Italy is anything to go by. Moldova topped the Italian vote last year with 16%, while Ukraine got 17% in 2021. Based on the last three years of Italian televoting, a mere 5% share would put an entry sixth (5 points), whereas our 9% estimate for Israel would see them bang in line with third-place (8 points). Even 9% of the vote in each country, then, could see Israel getting close to 300 televote points. There are a lot of variables at play, of course, and our confidence intervals should be very high, but what this exercise shows is that a huge televote score for Israel is well within the realms of possibility.

While betting markets have estimated Israel’s chance of victory at around 2–3% in the last few months, their real chance lies somewhere closer to 10% in my view, which seems a reasonable assessment of the likelihood of a landslide televote result in our social media age.

As we have also seen from the Euro Jury in which Eden Golan finished seventh, there are plenty of people who are happy to put their names behind Israel’s entry in spite of (or because of) the geopolitical situation. ‘Hurricane’ received a very high average of 8.5 points from the countries that awarded it points with the Euro Jury, suggesting both a very high degree of polarisation and potentially some overmarking from pro-Israel voters. This dynamic may well play out at Eurovision, where I suspect we may see the highest standard deviation in individual juror ranks in the contest’s history.

Given the wide range of outcomes, the likely low winning score and the potential for a co-ordinated televote campaign, one would be foolish to dismiss the possibility of an Israel victory.

Other rehearsal winners

Georgia’s pyro-heavy rehearsal impressed me, with Nutsa also standing out amongst the other female-led dance-break entries in terms of her delivery and command of the stage.

Portugal once again made excellent use of the stage at hand, creating a highly-effective piece of intimate staging that stands out like a sore thumb in terms of its professionalism in the second half of the first heat. In a year with very few ballads, Portugal’s strong staging and Iolanda’s faultless delivery illuminates a potential path for this to crack the top ten in the grand final à la ‘Bridges’.

With an increased budget, Bambie Thug has really taken the opportunity to showcase what they can do, delivering what looks like Ireland’s strongest piece of staging in a long time. Ireland should not have many issues qualifying, even if the top of the scoreboard remains elusive in the final.

Rehearsal losers

Slovenia’s stage package does not work for me on any level, with extremely harsh lighting in the rehearsal clip failing to create any sort of atmosphere. An unexpected lack of smoke also left the floor looking empty and unused. It’s pretty likely this will stay in the semis.

Serbia’s rehearsal was not terrible by any stretch, but from the 30-second clip, the staging does not do much to create an emotional pull and the entry has been massively outshone in the female ballad department by the Portuguese package.

Albania was another country lacking a cohesive visual narrative, with the performance appearing chaotic with too many disparate elements. Albania may ultimately have to rely solely on diaspora support to make it to the final.

The forecast

Below shows the latest results from 5,000 simulations of my Eurovision model. Projected points include simulations where an entry didn’t qualify (in which it would receive zero points). Likewise, average ranks include the semi-final results, so finishing 11th in the semi-final would lead to an overall rank of 27th, 12th in the semi-final would become 28th etc.

I have received press accreditation for this year’s contest, so please check Twitter/X this week for coverage of the dress rehearsals.

Image of the Eurovision trophy by Corinne Cumming / EBU.