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.

To the extent that it can be said that hard and carefully thought-out work pays off, this year’s winner from Bulgaria, Dara, is the world’s best example of this. The transformation the performance made from the Bulgarian final to the European final is nothing less than a textbook example of how a song that may not oozes winning can become just that with the right measures and the show on stage.

According to the winner herself, “Banagaranga” is Jamaican and means rebellion or disturbance, but figuratively it means complete chaos, freedom and the release of what I would assume are the feelings one is holding inside.

And that’s exactly the meaning that Dara and her dancers bring to the stage, here we get a stage show worthy of 2026 and there is so much energy released on that stage that viewers all over the world would have probably qualified for the Norwegian Music Award the minutes the song was performed on stage, because I must not forget to mention that one of the composers of the winning song is Norwegian Anne Judith Vik, how cool is that?

The fact that the song was sung in the first half of the final didn’t matter, I think this song would have won regardless of the starting number and the fact that the margin of victory record that Alexander Rybak has had since 2009 was broken says a lot, but especially when it comes to this record we must remember that while Dara was able to get points from 69 votes, our friend Rybak managed his margin of victory with points from 41 votes.

But, back to our friend Dara, who had actually learned a few words of Norwegian when she promoted her song in Norway in March, she has been one of her country’s most prominent artists in recent years so it’s hardly surprising that she won the Bulgarian artist final and, as luck would have it, won exactly the right song when she sang three songs that competed to be the contribution to Bulgaria this year.

There, “Banagaranga” was performed quite typically with 5 dancers standing around Dara and helping to give the song some energy in the performance, but as the smart lady Dara obviously is, she realized that much more energy on stage was needed for this song to really shine.

And then you get help from the best in this field, a Swedish choreographer and stage manager who you absolutely have to say knows his stuff and you end up with an energy bomb of dimensions on stage that you have never seen before in ESC history in my opinion and fortunately Dara got paid well for her efforts on stage, very well helped by the excellent dancers who I would assume are Swedish.

Just 5 days before the final and thus before the song was qualified for the final, our Romanian friend had odds that said that if she won, you would get almost 150 kroner back for every kroner you bet, which in most cases means that the song would have no chance of winning, but with such a convincing performance in both the semi-final and the final, she ended up getting between 6 and 10 kroner back for every kroner you bet on her and she had “only” a 10% chance of winning, but shame on anyone who gives up, she won more overwhelmingly than anyone else before her has.

I think this has something to do with the fact that the juries have been expanded to include more young people. We are already seeing a trend towards something more youthful and fresh in the stage show area, so I warmly welcome that trend, it could be a real vitamin injection for the competition.

I would assume that Bulgarian TV might have a national final next year as well, or maybe they choose to save money and just choose one artist, the future will tell, that person is in the final next year anyway.

Featured image – ESC Covers