Happy Eurovision Day! Tonight the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 will be held in Tel Aviv, Israel.

We are slowly reaching the climax of another long season. We’ve seen favourites rise, then watched as some of them fell – and now it’s just a few short hours until we will know the host country of ESC 2020.

Over the last six months or so, we have encountered some classic national final entries that we are still remembering and voting for in our SongHunt final – don’t forget to vote for your favourite here! – but tonight it’s the successful entries from 26 countries that will finally compete for the Eurovision crown. And we all wonder: Who will hold the trophy at the end of the show?

It’s time for our team’s predictions!

The format is simple: Each of the escgo! team members (Martin, Felix and Shi) has 100 points to distribute across the entries depending on how likely they consider them to be tonight’s winner.

And here’s what they think:

Country	Martin	Felix	Shi	TEAM POINTS	VICTORY CHANCE in %
1. Malta	0	0	0	0	0%
2. Albania	0	0	0	0	0%
3. Czech Republic	0	5	0	5	1.67%
4. Germany	0	0	0	0	0%
5. Russia	0	5	0	5	1.67%
6. Denmark	0	0	0	0	0%
7. San Marino	0	0	0	0	0%
8. North Macedonia	0	5	0	5	1.67%
9. Sweden	5	5	10	20	6.67%
10. Slovenia	0	5	0	5	1.67%
11. Cyprus	0	0	0	0	0%
12. Netherlands	45	15	40	100	33.3%
13. Greece	0	5	0	5	1.67%
14. Israel	0	0	0	0	0%
15. Norway	0	20	0	20	6.67%
16. United Kingdom	0	0	0	0	0%
17. Iceland	0	0	0	0	0%
18. Estonia	0	0	0	0	0%
19. Belarus	0	0	0	0	0%
20. Azerbaijan	0	0	5	5	1.67%
21. France	0	0	5	5	1.67%
22. Italy	0	25	0	25	8.33%
23. Serbia	0	0	0	0	0%
24. Switzerland	10	5	15	30	10%
25. Australia	40	5	25	70	23.3%
26. Spain	0	0	0	0	0%

So what do we expect? Here’s how the team explains their choices:

Shi:
With both juries and televote having many options this year, this could be a jury/tele disagreement or a Jamala-type win.
Netherlands is one of my personal favorites, but I’m still not convinced by the performance where the televote is concerned. However, it stands out also for its genre among the favorites which could help and a “Heroes” sort of win seems to me like the most likely result. Australia looks set to have a big televote impact, so it should be considered as an alternative if its televote score is big enough, and Switzerland can be the one that wins neither but ends up high in both votes.

Felix:
I have had an increasingly strong feeling for Italy throughout the last weeks, and our own chat agrees, as Italy won the ChatVote 2019. I don‘t expect Australia to end up as high as many people think. Instead, Norway might be the surprise of the night. A victory for the Netherlands wouldn‘t be a big surprise, but I can just as well see it around lower top ten only. All in all, I expect a close race in which many things can happen.

Martin:
I appear to broadly agree with Shi, albeit with different weightings. I can easily imagine the Netherlands winning the jury vote and Australia the televote, with Duncan taking the victory in the end because the juries turn their noses up at popera-on-sticks. In terms of the other contenders, I haven’t especially believed in Switzerland all season long, but it was pretty effective in the semi-final and the running order appears to have cemented its “Fuego”-esque late-stage momentum as far as the producers are concerned. It still doesn’t feel like it can actually win (although ESC 2020 in Switzerland would be a fairly amazing turnaround in fortunes) but it’d be foolish of me not to have Luca somewhere in my prediction. And then there’s the obligatory “might just win by default” entry from Sweden, like always.

What do you think will happen tonight? Do you agree or disagree with our views? Let us know in the comments, on social media or in our chat. However you watch the show tonight, we hope you have a great Eurovision day, and may the best song win!