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.

You would think that the fact that the countries that are directly qualified for the final now get to show off in one of the semi-finals should increase their chances of a better result in the final, but it obviously only helps some of these countries.

Germany, along with Great Britain, are the countries that have most often come last in the final in the 2000s, so even though 12 points from the juries saved them from that exact spot, Sarah Engels is unlikely to be in a state of shock over the fact that she came in 23rd place and also received 0 points from the audience. The presenters obviously thought it was so bad that 3 countries received the lousy score from the public that they had to point out that only the ten countries that received the most telephone votes received points in the voting and that the 0-point songs were therefore not as bad as it might seem.

In Norway we have the expression “To Jump After Wirkola” and in ESC we have a similar expression for those who try their hand at fierce Latino songs and it is “To Perform After Eleni Foureira”, because that lady has set the standard for how such songs should be performed.

And even though Sarah did her very best with the song “Fire”, nothing resembling a fiery inferno on stage could ignite the audience to vote for her. First of all, it was far too weak vocally, but another problem is that the energy shown on stage does not have enough power in it, it becomes too puzzled.

This lady also cheated, you can hear that it is being sung, but it is not the artist on stage who is doing it, but still the voice is confusingly similar to the person listed as the artist, it is so transparent that the next thing hurts and I don’t really like getting hung up on costumes, when you are going to perform such a fierce song it is okay to be a little fiercely dressed, but it should still be tasteful and in my opinion it was not quite that here.

Our German friends should be proud of the effort, maybe it’s time to tone down the violence a bit and instead have something a little more subdued to serve to the EC audience next year, then things tend to go better for our German friends.

Featured image – ESC Covers