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. 

Being from the Caucasian part of the catchment area of ​​our beloved competition was obviously no advantage, for our friends from Georgia, the group Bzikebi, failed to convince the voters that their song “On Replay” should be played multiple times in this year’s competition.

3 points in total from 2 juries and 2 points from the people of Greece were all that came to these three nice young people who once again proved that success in Junior-ESC is quite difficult to transfer to Senior-ESC.

However, it must be said that a short clip from their performance of their song at the turquoise runner event has now been viewed over 925,000 times on escNorge’s TikTok account, which is a new record for them on that platform, so there’s something to this group.

I would say that this is a song with some potential that was quickly squandered on vocals that varied quite a bit from okay to pretty sour and quite fake at times, so even though these three have some experience from such scenes, it didn’t help them much in their semi-final.

Throw in a song that is messy and is a stage show that, most of all, is unfocused and makes no sense of what the song is really about, and throw in a lack of charm and little energy in the performance, and basically the placement they got is completely out of place, very last in their semi-final.

Our Georgian friends have never received as few points as they did this year, so for them too, it’s a matter of gathering strength and sharpening up for next year, and this country has only qualified for the final 2 times in the last 10 times they have participated, so it’s questionable whether they have that much sharpening up inside, time will tell, and to somehow make them feel a little better, this was their 4th place finish in a semi-final.

Featured image – ESC Covers