Image:   EBU / STIJN SMULDERS

Happy Eurovision Day! Tonight the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 will be held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

After more than two years, the longest wait for any new winner in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest is as good as over. And in a few hours, we will know who will hold the trophy! And we can assume we’ll also know which country will host the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. But for now, let’s speculate a bit:

It’s time for our team’s predictions!

The format is simple: Each of the escgo! team members (Martin, Felix and Shi) has 100 points to distribute across the entries depending on how likely they consider them to be tonight’s winner.

And here’s what they think:

Country by running order	Martin	Felix	Shi	TEAM POINTS	VICTORY CHANCE in %
1. Cyprus
2. Albania
3. Israel
4. Belgium
5. Russia
6. Malta	15	11	30	56	18.7%
7. Portugal
8. Serbia
9. United Kingdom
10. Greece
11. Switzerland	5	27	13	45	15%
12. Iceland	25			25	8.3%
13. Spain
14. Moldova
15. Germany
16. Finland
17. Bulgaria
18. Lithuania
19. Ukraine	18	5	12	35	11.7%
20. France	18	19	5	42	14%
21. Azerbaijan
22. Norway
23. The Netherlands
24. Italy	19	38	40	97	32.3%
25. Sweden
26. San Marino

So what do we expect? Here’s how the team explains their choices:

Shi: In the last few years I always started writing this with a very clear sense of “I have no idea” – and then got it right in the last three competitions. But seriously: I have no idea. Many people talk about winner vibes, but honestly – there were very few times when I felt very strongly about anything really standing out as a winner. I still went with what I felt stood out the most for other reasons: be it the visuals and how they work with the song or the personalities (as many winners had before) – especially of Damiano – contributing to the impact of this. I picked Malta as the backup option because I do think that if there’s a song I feel like do well across the board, it’s this one, but sometimes it’s really hard to say if that will be enough.

Felix: I never considered Italy to be a good song to begin with, and I always failed to understand its appeal to others. But I’m sure the same was valid for many in 2014, 2016 and 2017. While I can’t help but believing that this is the winner, I don’t get any winner vibes myself at all. But the world around me screams “you’re wrong”, and I’ve been proven wrong enough with my predictions for the semi-finals. And if only to not jinx my actual winner vibes entry, yep, going for Italy in my prediction. It feels foolish, not to. If not Italy then I guess it will be Switzerland. France, Malta and Ukraine are not without a realistic chance, either, but especially the latter feels so unlikely that I gave it my lowest value. I don’t see any country other than these five within reach of the trophy.

Martin: I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen tonight (it’s a good feeling though!) so I’m spreading my scores around plenty too. I’ve said all season that Iceland is the kind of song that can get broad appeal – I’m very much including the juries here – and while I actually expect the Covid narrative to take the wind out of its sails and leave it ending up 7th or something, there’s still a possibility for a sympathy vote and I have no better idea of what’s going to win, so I’ll keep them in front for now. But only narrowly. Elsewhere, I’m being a chicken and giving more or less even scores to the songs that can all be expected to score big with one side of the vote but maybe not the other, since it’s such an unpredictable year – and just a little nod to Switzerland in case the voting really is totally all over the place, because something like that could still sneak through the middle.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments – and have a great Eurovision night!