This morning, the allocation draw for the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest was hosted at the Column Hall of the Kyiv City State Administration. This followed on from yesterday’s presentation of the visual design for the competition and this year’s slogan: “Celebrate Diversity”.
As in recent years, the countries had previously been divided into “pots” based on their voting history with the aim of ensuring a balanced spread across the two semi-finals. To allow the delegations to make their travel plans based on the preliminary rehearsal schedule, the participating countries were also assigned to either the first or second half of the respective show.
The draw was as follows:
| SEMI-FINAL 1 | SEMI-FINAL 2 |
| First half | First half |
| Albania Australia Azerbaijan Belgium Finland Georgia Montenegro Portugal Sweden |
Austria Denmark Hungary Ireland FYR Macedonia Malta Netherlands Romania Russia Serbia |
| Second half | Second half |
| Armenia Cyprus Czech Republic Greece Iceland Latvia Moldova Poland Slovenia |
Belarus Bulgaria Croatia Estonia Israel Lithuania Norway San Marino Switzerland |
The “big five” countries, who are already qualified for the grand final, and host nation Ukraine were also assigned to the semi-finals that they are required to broadcast and vote in:
Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom will vote in the first semi-final on Tuesday 9 May.
France, Germany and Ukraine will vote in the second semi-final on Thursday 11 May.
As in the past four years, the exact order of performance will be decided by the producers once all the entries have been chosen, the aim being to create a varied and interesting running order.
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