Like previous years, ESC COVERS will again share a blog post from Morten Thomassen of OGAE NORWAY with his views on the positions reached by all 35 2026 entries. ESC Covers google translated it from Norwegian to English.

As one of the few countries, our Ukrainian friends have not been outside the top 10 when the final result was final this decade, but now they have had 2 ninth places in a row so the question is whether they are perhaps on a negative trend in terms of results for them, and the support from the voting public is declining, so I wonder if they will last the whole decade.

This year, it was the artist Leleka who represented her homeland with the song “Ridnym”, which from what I understand means “Relatives”, and in a war-torn country, there is a certain risk that your relatives are scattered around many parts of the world and that it is something you can really miss.

The artist’s first name is Viktoria, she has chosen to use her last name as her artist name, it is quite possible that her first name was already “taken” on the artist front back home in Ukraine, she has otherwise been involved in a music project called Donbasgrl.

On stage in Vienna, Leleka impressed us with great vocals and a cool costume, but the song itself was probably the kind that many people find quite boring, but the lady deserves it, she brings out the pain in the song in an outstanding way and the long note she holds towards the end of the song when the curtains fall is simply impressive.

Juries usually fall for good vocals, but not in Leleka’s case, as she received over three times as many votes from the public, and they thus secured another top-10 placement, and all in all, it was probably deserved once again.

However, this country is clearly struggling to find songs that juries can like, so it’s questionable whether they shouldn’t have a little help from foreign juries in their national final next year to better meet their tastes, just a suggestion from my side.

Featured image – ESC Covers