Happy Eurovision Day! Tonight it’s time for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 held in Malmö.

In just a few hours, we will find out who will succeed last year’s winner, Loreen from Sweden. As we write this, the news of the Netherlands’ exclusion from tonight’s show is still sinking in – that’s clearly a story that will have ramifications for some time to come, and it’s just the cherry on top of a seriously turbulent year for our favourite competition.

Nevertheless, we will try to keep the fun side of things in focus too with a bit of speculation. Who will hold the trophy tonight? Who will host the 2025 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, all else being equal? Where will your and our favourites end up on the scoreboard? These are questions that will soon be answered, but in the meantime…

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 %
Sweden
Ukraine
Germany
Luxembourg
Israel	25	12	5	42	14%
Lithuania
Spain
Estonia
Ireland		5		5	1.67%
Latvia
Greece
United Kingdom
Norway
Italy
Serbia
Finland
Portugal
Armenia		1		1	0.33%
Cyprus
Switzerland	25	19	35	79	26.33%
Slovenia
Croatia	25	36	35	96	32%
Georgia
France	25	27	25	77	25.67
Austria

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

Martin:
Apparently a song contest is taking place tonight, although you wouldn’t necessarily know it. Anyway, I really have no idea what’s going to happen in the voting, so I’m going straight down the middle with my predictions: 25% for each of what I’d consider to be the three “big hitters” near the end, i.e. Nemo, Baby Lasagna and Slimane, and the remaining 25% for Eden Golan, just in case that Italian semi-final televote result really is indicative of a bigger trend that no one will be able to stop – because let’s be honest, it really might be. Can anyone else make a realistic claim for victory? Ukraine should never be discounted in light of [gestures around self] everything, but their entry doesn’t really feel like a winning package, so a placing on the edges of the top five is perhaps more likely. (Now watch Finland walk away with it or something. That’d be very 2024 somehow.)

At the other end of the table, I feel like Spain could be in trouble unless the arena crowd’s enthusiasm translates into some serious televotes. If it does, perhaps the Austrian entry will feel like a bit of an unnecessary footnote and end up falling through the gaps?

Felix:
What a year. The headlines surrounding this remarkable Eurovision final day don’t really make it easier to predict the outcome of the contest. I don’t feel it yet, but by maths (and by odds), Croatia still should be the most likely winner, but if that doesn’t happen? Every other option I see has a “yes, but…” attached to it, whether it’s France, Switzerland, Israel or Ireland – all for different reasons. When was the last time when predicting the winner was this difficult? In the end, there could be a scenario when something wins that absolutely nobody has on their radar – may I dare and call Armenia the dark horse of the year?

The other end of the table is easier to predict: Germany. I also fear that Luxembourg could be close to the bottom too, and I would really hate to see this happen.

Shi:
You’re asking me to know things? In this economy? A lot of things happened in the last few days to have changed people’s perceptions on what might win tonight. I, for the most part, think it’s an overreaction (thanks for your special touch of chaos, RAI) but I can’t completely ignore it. However, I still think at the end of the day it will be down to three songs – each one in a slightly different category. Switzerland is the one that I feel is the most likely to do well in both televote and jury vote, while Croatia seems like it should do really well in televote and maybe not as well with the juries, but still, enough. On the other side of the spectrum we have France, which should do extremely well with juries, and if it can surprise us and get more televotes than initially expected, Slimane can do a Paparizou and get Eurovision to Paris, mere months after hosting the Olympics.

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