The second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 is just a few hours away, and so it’s time for us in the escgo! team to predict the remaining ten qualifiers for the grand final on Saturday.

It was a mixed bag for us as far as semi 1 was concerned – individually we picked out borderliners like Iceland, Portugal and San Marino, but collectively we all fell into the trap of believing that Belgium and Cyprus were on their way through to the final (albeit with some caveats in our comments). So let’s see if we can do better tonight!

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

Country	Martin	Felix	Shi	TEAM
Australia	Q		Q
Montenegro		Q
Ireland			Q
Latvia		Q
Armenia	Q		Q
Austria	Q	Q	Q
Greece	Q		Q
Lithuania	Q
Malta	Q	Q
Georgia		Q
Denmark		Q
Czechia		Q	Q
Luxembourg	Q		Q
Israel	Q	Q	Q
Serbia	Q	Q	Q
Finland	Q	Q	Q

Martin:
Austria, Malta, Israel and Finland are the only dead certs here as far as I’m concerned. I’m leaving out both Denmark and Czechia with a heavy heart, though I hope the song quality of the latter in particular is enough to outweigh any issues with the performance and styling choices. Ireland and Luxembourg are sufficiently similar as songs that I’m not sure they can both squeeze through, and as much as I’d love for the televoters to go left-field and appreciate the likes of Latvia, I don’t really see it.

Serbia probably deserves to miss out, but we’ve said that before and they’ve qualified thanks to the usual factors, so why not also tonight? I’m really not sure about Greece but people I trust seem to like it, so OK. My longest shot, however, is probably Armenia – it’s a shouty nothingburger of a song, but the rehearsal clips have looked impressive, so let’s put them in too.

Felix:
I never had a 10/10 prediction outcome, and it seems I’m getting further away from it as the 21st century progresses. The consequence: I think I can now allow myself to base parts of my prediction on wishful thinking (Latvia and Georgia), other parts on gut feeling (Denmark, Serbia) and surprisingly striking stagings (Montenegro, Czechia), and the rest on common sense considering the odds.

I hope I’m wrong about Luxembourg NQ, but the Sha-la-lie vibes I’m getting from the presentation tell me otherwise. But with 100% televoting – dare I say it – not even Austria is a safe Q. However, Finland shouldn’t have any problems with qualification.

Shi:
There are three songs I feel certain will qualify: Finland, Israel and Austria. Unlike Martin, though, I’m not at all sure about Malta. They usually throw a kitchen sink at their entries, but this time they threw several sinks and it’s a lot to take in. Australia is very busy, too, and very silly, but in a different way which will either do really well or really won’t. Both are competing for my 10th and final spot in the semi and at the time of writing this paragraph I’m actually still undecided about that.

My risky call of the semi is having Ireland through alongside Luxembourg. Cute and inoffensive songs that are also very catchy, cute singers and fun stagings.

Greece, Armenia and Serbia have each cornered a niche that has proved to have an audience in the past and they are all getting the most out of their performances (and in some cases, hair). Czechia was another tough call but I think that its place in the running order, his voice and the way the staging works with the structure of the song will be enough to make it stand out.

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