The second of two particularly busy weekends of national final action ahead of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest is over, and after what felt like a long January and February, we suddenly find ourselves knowing 30+ of the selected songs for this year’s competition. Only the finals in Sweden, Norway and Lithuania remain, along with a bunch of reveals of internally selected entries. As the finish line approaches, let’s take a look back at what was chosen over the weekend!

The Super Saturday marathon started with a 90-minute show to select Saara Aalto‘s entry for Finland. Already chosen internally to represent the country in Lisbon, the two-times previous national finalist – who also finished as runner-up on the UK version of The X Factor a couple of years ago – had been given three songs to work with. Three very different performances (and outfits!) were developed for presentation in the live show with, it must be said, limited success. None of the packages was entirely persuasive either visually or vocally, but in the end the international juries and the local public agreed that “Monsters” would be the Finnish entry for ESC 2018.

After two semi-finals, the Eesti Laul preselection in Estonia concluded with one of the most widely predicted results of the season, as soprano Elina Nechayeva took the victory with “La forza”. The detailed results paint a quite overwhelming picture, With Elina grabbing 70% of the televotes in the three-song superfinal, leaving her nearest rival – 2015 representative Stig Rästa – with no chance. Cue two months of incessant debate about whether this operatic piece, already a fan favourite in some quarters, will be more of an Il Volo than a Malena Ernman, Amaury Vassili, Alenka Gotar… well, you get the idea.

A pattern is emerging in Iceland, which insists on having a two-song superfinal even though the winner of the first round frequently gets overturned in favour of the other superfinalist. Cue the 2018 edition of Söngvakeppnin (surely one of the best Eurovision words), in which Dagur Sigurðsson easily won the first-round jury and telephone vote with “Í stormi” – only to be squeezed out by the eventual winner, Ari Ólafsson with the remarkably old-fashioned “Our Choice”. Not that old-fashioned is inherently bad, of course – last year’s winner was hardly at the cutting edge of modern pop – but it’ll be interesting to see whether Ari’s undoubted charm is enough to return Iceland to the grand final after several years on the wrong side of the equation.

What can you say about San Marino at Eurovision? When they’re not selling their entry to a rich Turkish sleazeball or greasing Valentina Monetta’s wheels for another tilt at qualification, they’re coming up with concepts like this year’s 1in360, a peculiar hybrid of online talent show and crowdfunding platform. A multicultural mix of singers from all over Europe and beyond gathered in Bratislava, Slovakia – because where else would a San Marino preselection be held? – for two semi-finals and a final, with the lucky qualifiers getting the chance to gather funds for their songs in exchange for votes. (It’s not quite as dodgy as that makes it sound.) At the end of all that, it was Jessika Muscat, a veteran of the Maltese national final, who took victory with her song “Who We Are” (also featuring a remarkable interlude from Jenifer Brening). It’s hard to know how to judge this kind of selection process as a fan, and it’d be nice for this microstate to concentrate more on actually representing itself in the competition – but you could also argue it’s a transparent way of doing things, so there’s something to be said for that.

The final selection show of the night came in Poland, where things proceeded more conventionally. Ten finalists, a jury vote combined with a televote, and a radio pop winner that could have come straight out of Dansk Melodi Grand Prix. Which, in itself, is a bit of a turn-up for a country that’s been fond of its ballads in recent years. Polish DJ Gromee and featured vocalist Lukas Meijer from Sweden will perform “Light Me Up” for Poland at ESC 2018.

As Saturday turned into Sunday, one of the competition’s more consistent performers showed its hand. Azerbaijan has stuck to its winning formula (literally) for years now – internal selection, local artist, Swedish songwriting and production team – and 2018 is no exception. Proving that “firewalls”/”cannonballs” is a perfectly valid rhyme when you’re an ESC songwriter, 28-year-old Aisel will sing “X My Heart” in Lisbon. We can only hope the preview video features Aisel on a glamorous day out in a car with a sunroof like Tina Reynolds got to enjoy back in 1974.

Fast-forward to Sunday evening, and it felt weird not to have a Romanian show waiting for us. Instead we looked to Portugal for this year’s edition of Festival da Canção, which would determine the host entry for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.

(Say that again, because it never gets old: Portugal is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest, because Portugal won the Eurovision Song Contest. Yep.)

Anyway, there had been some controversy after semi-final winner and early favourite Diogo Piçarra decided to withdraw his song following accusations of plagiarism. That left the door open for the rest of the field, and Cláudia Pascoal – who had finished second behind Diogo in his semi-final – duly took advantage, achieving first place in the public vote and second place with the juries to claim overall victory with “O jardim”. The song is quite daring for an ESC entry in that it just does its thing without any real concession to the competition, and in that respect it’s something of a refreshing addition to this year’s line-up (and the kind of thing you should probably be trying when you’re already qualified for the grand final anyway).

So that’s all for another busy few days in Eurovision world. Don’t forget to vote in Heat 6 of our SongHunt and support your robbed favourites from this weekend’s semi-finals!