Semi 1? We did okay! Our overall team prediction was spot on, and Shi can also pat herself on the back for scoring 10/10 in her individual prediction.

Now our attention turns to the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 – so, once again, it’s time for us in the escgo! team to predict which ten songs will get a repeat appearance at the grand final on Saturday.

You can see the choices of Shi, Martin and Felix in the table below – followed by a brief summary of their views!

Country	Martin	Felix	Shi	TEAM
Denmark		Q	Q
Armenia	Q	Q	Q
Romania
Estonia
Belgium	Q	Q	Q
Cyprus		Q	Q
Iceland
Greece	Q
Poland	Q	Q	Q
Slovenia	Q
Georgia	Q	Q	Q
San Marino
Austria	Q	Q	Q
Albania	Q	Q	Q
Lithuania	Q	Q	Q
Australia	Q	Q	Q

Shi: You know what they say about karma. So it should surprise absolutely no one that after boasting about how easy it was for me to pick the qualifiers in the first semi, in this one I might as well pick them out of a hat and have a better chance of getting it right than actually predicting. I had about two qualifiers I was sure about and a couple of sure non-qualifiers, and then I slowly eliminated the rest until I narrowed it down to ten. Slovenia was the last to go, but really, who the hell knows. Not even Edgar.

Martin: I’m fairly sure of eight, and then it’s a fight between Denmark, Estonia, Cyprus, Slovenia and Albania for the last two slots. Each have their flaws: Denmark has shaky live vocals, Estonia flirts with dullness, Cyprus lacks a connection with the viewer, Slovenia feels like a native-language album track, and Albania is spectacularly old-fashioned.
In the end, and I may regret this, I’m going to go with charisma – or likeability – as the deciding factor in a televote-only context. That means Estonia and Cyprus miss out, even with the latter’s automatic votes in this line-up. And in the end, I don’t quite trust Reiley to deliver on the night, so he can go home too. But I am absolutely not certain about any of this (least of all Albania). It’s a strange semi.

Felix: I know, my predictions are probably very daring in parts. The problem was: I didn’t find any reasons why Romania, Iceland or San Marino would qualify, Greece and Slovenia aren’t instant enough, and Estonia suffers from an early draw with a stronger female ballad from another Baltic country later on.
On the other side, I am not sure about Denmark, Belgium, Cyprus, Albania, Lithuania, Australia and not even Austria, so I might be very very wrong today.
I’m prepared to be wrong. And in the end, the only thing that would really surprise me is Romania qualifying.

Who do you agree with and what do you think will be the big shocks tonight? Let us know in the comments!