Happy Eurovision Day! Tonight it’s time for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 held in Liverpool.

In just a few hours, we will find out who will succeed last year’s winner, Kalush Orchestra from Ukraine, the country that – for obvious reasons – was unable to host the 2023 event after Turin did so last year.

Who will hold the trophy tonight? Who will host the 2024 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, all else being equal? Where will your and our favourites end up on the scoreboard? Exciting questions that we’re all having in our heads in these and the next hours, and we can only speculate about some of them… so let’s do exactly that:

It’s time for our team’s prediction!

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:

	Martin	Felix	Shi	TEAM POINTS	VICTORY CHANCE in %
1. Austria
2. Portugal
3. Switzerland
4. Poland
5. Serbia
6. France
7. Cyprus
8. Spain		5		5	1.67%
9. Sweden	50	35	60	145	48.3%
10. Albania
11. Italy	14			14	4.67%
12. Estonia
13. Finland	23	28	25	76	25.3%
14. Czechia
15. Australia
16. Belgium
17. Armenia
18. Moldova
19. Ukraine	10	12	10	32	10.67%
20. Norway
21. Germany
22. Lithuania
23. Israel	3	20	5	28	9.33%
24. Slovenia
25. Croatia
26. United Kingdom

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

Martin: The coronation of Loreen 2.0 feels like an inevitability – not a crushing one, but more of an “Only Teardrops” scenario, where we all looked around for plausible alternatives and a few of them came close, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Nevertheless, my percentages indicate the other songs that I feel could yet have a path to the win: Finland if Käärijä gets a huge televote, Italy if Marco gets all the jury love while the televote is comparatively split, and Israel if the lower standard of this year’s field means Europe is happy to order “SloMo” from Wish.

And then there’s the unknown factor of Ukraine. As much as Tvorchi’s song is weaker than what Kalush Orchestra gave us last year, there’s an inherent unpredictability to that particular part of the scoreboard that I have to reflect here. But overall: Sweden feels the most likely winner to me.

Felix: I was really joining into the wider belief in the bubble that Finland would be the actual winner this year, but the closer we get to the final, the more I feel “it is gonna be Sweden, isn’t it”. So yes, Loreen is the most likely to hold the trophy tonight, even though I see a possibility that it’s going to be tight especially in the televote, with Sweden, Finland and Israel fighting for the top position.

Ukraine is the big unknown here as Martin already said, but everything other than Top 5 would surprise me. Completing the Top 5: Spain or Italy really, but I went for Spain because it’s more extraordinary and will probably leave a bigger impression. The only other possible contenders for Top 5 would be Croatia (thanks to televote) and Lithuania (thanks to juries), but it’s most likely not going to happen.

Shi: It’s no secret Loreen’s Eurovision entries and I don’t get along, but that never stopped people (and juries) from voting for her before. She is a gifted performer, and despite my reservations about a former winner coming back with a pretty similar entry, I also can’t see anything else beating it.

There are only few songs that I think could do real damage in the televote – Finland and Israel. Neither will beat her in the jury vote because, well, it’s the jury vote, and I suspect neither can be close enough to her in that vote to still get the overall win. Martin was calling it the “Only Teardrops” win, but I am thinking more along the lines of “Heroes”. There’s also Ukraine, for obvious reasons, but I think the passage of time will reduce the impact of the story.

Let me put it this way: a Swedish entry competes in a Eurovision taking place in the UK. The entry has an intro and first few words that are a throwback to ABBA’s “The Winner Takes it All”, just in time to not only tie the all-time winning record but also bring the competition back to Sweden for the 50th anniversary of another Swedish song that won Eurovision on British soil – you might have heard of it. Can it really be anything else?

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