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.

The fact that my favorite song in ESC doesn’t do particularly well is something I’ve learned to get used to, however, it was perhaps a bit disappointing that the guys in Bandidos do Cante didn’t make it to the final with the song “Rosa”, the odds had them in the final, but it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

You can’t take away from our Portuguese friends the fact that they are very true to their own musical traditions and have almost never chosen someone who wanders the typical ESC song street and it is precisely that they are so true to their own type of music that has given them many followers and a good number of final places as well.

But, no tree grows into the sky and when the semi-final axe was to cut down the unnecessary trees in semi-final 1, the battle was lost for them, they had to look far away from their 6th final place in a row.

The song is still fantastic to my taste, but on the big ESC stage I feel like the magic from the Portuguese final had disappeared, while they appeared awkwardly charming at home, a good part of the charm had been lost when they took to the stage in Vienna.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that you get a little nervous when so many people are watching, because vocally there are varying qualities going on, but the main problem with this performance is that they fail to appear as a group, there are five guys on the same stage who perform a song with minimal interaction and they fail to convey the mood of the song on stage and then it becomes a bit boring TV, unfortunately.

I strongly believe that next year this country will present something that sounds like it is from that country and with a little more stage presence, a place in the finals will probably be in order.

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