Editorials & Opinion

When should we expect the Eurovision 2020 running order announcement?

Just under seven years ago, the EBU revealed the first-ever producer-determined running order draw following the introduction of the rule ahead of the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. With the EBU confirming that preparations for the contest are continuing as planned, we are now awaiting the reveal of the running order for the 2020 Eurovision semi-finals, we’ve taken a look at exactly when the announcement has happened in every contest since the rule’s introduction.

Looking through the archives

To do this, we’ve simply looked through eurovision.tv‘s archives and found the following data:

  • The date of each year’s semi-final running order announcement
  • The date of each year’s mid-March head of delegations meeting. This tends to run over a Sunday to Tuesday period, we have taken the Monday with it widely agreed as the key date during the meeting.
  • The date of day one of each year’s rehearsal schedule.

Our findings

ContestOrder RevealDays After DeadlineDays Before Rehearsals
🇮🇱 Tel Aviv 20192 April22 days (11 March)32 days (4 May)
🇵🇹 Lisbon 20183 April22 days (12 March)26 days (29 April)
🇺🇦 Kyiv 201731 March18 days (13 March)30 days (30 April)
🇸🇪 Stockholm 20168 April25 days (14 March)24 days (2 May)
🇦🇹 Vienna 201523 March7 days (16 March)49 days (11 May)
🇩🇰 Copenhagen 201424 March7 days (17 March)35 days (28 April)
🇸🇪 Malmö 201328 March10 days (18 March)39 days (6 May)

Analysis

We’ve never had an order reveal later than April 8th, which was 25 days after the entry deadline for Stockholm 2016. Typically, the running order arrives in the last week of March. An important factor in some years could be the Easter weekend, which, in 2016, was as early as between 25 March and 28 March. In 2018, the Easter weekend took place between 30 March and 2 April. Therefore, early Easters could’ve been the result of the order being pushed into April.

Nevertheless, with Easter taking place between 19 April and 22 April in 2019, this had no effect on 2019. This year, Easter takes place between 10 April and 13 April. Once again, we presume the running order will be revealed prior to this holiday.

However, despite the increasingly earlier entry deadlines as the years progressed between 2013 and 2015, the running orders for Stockholm, Kyiv, Lisbon and Tel Aviv took significantly longer to arrive. There definitely seems to be a shift to later running order reveals and it would make it likely that the running orders for Rotterdam will arrive week commencing 30 March. Rehearsals not commencing until the first week of May also means a slight easing of pressure on producers, further suggesting it will once again come later rather than earlier.

However, the later Easter weekend could mean there are no additional delays to proceedings unlike the early Easter weekends ahead of the Stockholm and Lisbon contests which resulted in two of our three April reveals to date. Nevertheless, it is expected that we will be given the running orders between 23 March and 3 April based on previous findings.

How is the running order decided?

Ahead of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest, the official Eurovision YouTube channel offered insight on how a running order for the Eurovision Song Contest is determined. Give it a watch below:

When do you think the Eurovision 2020 semi-final running order announcement will take place? Let us know your predictions at @ESCXTRA!

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