Happy Eurovision Day! Tonight it’s time for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 held in Basel. Which can only mean one thing…

It’s time for our team’s prediction!

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. Below the table you’ll find a detailed discussion of their reasons for the points they’ve given!

And here’s what they think:

	Martin	Felix	Shi	TEAM POINTS	VICTORY CHANCE in %
Norway
Luxembourg
Estonia	6			6	2%
Israel	4			4	1.33%
Lithuania
Spain
Ukraine
United Kingdom
Austria	10	20	30	60	20%
Iceland
Latvia
Netherlands		10		10	3.33%
Finland	10			10	3.33%
Italy
Poland
Germany
Greece
Armenia
Switzerland			10	10	3.33%
Malta
Portugal
Denmark
Sweden	32	20	15	67	22.33%
France	38	24	45	107	35.67%
San Marino
Albania		26		26	8.67%

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

Martin:
A long-running Eurovision fan site – even more long-running than ours! – has a regular feature that explains “why your favourite isn’t going to win ESC”. The punchline every year is that no one will win. Maybe this is the year when it finally comes true?

I, at least, have no idea who is going to win the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. All of the bookies’ favourites have flaws that could and should count against them. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if we see a big, big disconnect between the juries and the televote tonight – possibly even to the extent that they have completely different top fives. Even if it doesn’t end up being that extreme, an outcome along those lines probably benefits the least obviously polarising of the frontrunners, namely Sweden (who should get some jury love along with a big televote score) and France (who could win the jury vote, unless Austria have other ideas, and should pick up a decent televote from their late position in the running order). That’s why I’ve given my biggest percentages to those two, with a slight lean toward France purely because I feel like the producers really want us to look in their direction. I already likened a potential French win to Yugoslavia in 1989 – the “go on then, it’s your turn at last” factor – and maybe this is the year.

If it does end up being a weirdly polarised vote, the strength of the televote for Israel can’t be ignored altogether, especially if the juries vote on the song (which is nice!) and not other criteria, so they deserve a few points in my prediction. Austria might connect with televoters in a way I personally can’t see (whereas jury love for the ultimate jurywank is basically guaranteed), so again, they need to be in the mix somewhere. Life is unfair, so I have to protect myself against a Tommy Cash triumph with some points for Estonia too – I know it feels like a televote powerhouse, but I can see a good number of music professionals respecting what he does too, even if I don’t. And heck, why *not* Finland? Erika gives – excuse my language – the camera-fucking performance of the night in a way that will unite the passions of gay men and straight dads across the continent. There are even some of those on the juries too, after all.

But all of this is a stab in the dark. I really have no idea. And that’s fun!

Felix:
Spoiler: Why shouldn’t I back the (dark) horse that nobody else backs?

Let’s take a look at the five contenders in my book:

Netherlands: A slick package, a catchy tune, a solid performance, but yet – something is missing to see this on the top.

Austria: A very striking performance of course, both vocally and visually. Just, the overall dramatic feel might not hit the nerve of the continent this year. Will enough parts of Europe televote for it en masse? I have my doubts. But it has the potential.

Sweden: It all depends on whether this works in all parts of Europe. It’s almost presumptuous to not call this the clear winner, but yet, I can’t. Maybe it’s the clear runner-up instead?

France: The staging turns this heavy song into a serious contender. What a bit of sand, saaaand, can do. Risky to say, but a French win feels more realistic to me than an Austrian or Swedish one.

Albania: Will win. There, I said it. I got signs from the universe, and I got similar ones before I correctly predicted 2017. I am not as sure as before the Sobral victory, when I allocated a whopping 60 of my 100 points to Portugal, but “Zjerm” might be just the stirring ethno tune that everyone around Europe waited for.

Shi:
In recent years, I feel completely out of my depth when it’s finally time to call my winner prediction. Most of the time I find it frustrating – there’s something about getting it right, you know? But not this year. This year I’m going to guess, and I’ll be happy if I’m right, but will also be happy to be wrong, really. I just want to have an edition where not only the result isn’t glaringly obvious, but also on a selfish, personal level, I actually don’t mind any of the possible winners (even if I do have my big favorites).

If you read my preview, I think I made my feelings known about both my favorites and the favorites to win, and I apologize in advance for being that boring person that has both sets pretty much overlap. Either way, some more technical explanations of my predictions are in order.

France feels to me like an entry that has the best chance to do really well in both sets of votes. Its jury appeal is obvious, but I think her star quality and personality could really help this beautiful song to also reach viewers at home.

If Austria wins, I think it will be similar to how Switzerland won last year: heavy jury support, a reasonable enough televote score to still be among the favorites of the audience at home even if it ends up far from winning that particular vote.

I don’t imagine Sweden doing exceptionally well with the juries, but jurors are humans and it’s a very well-executed and catchy fun entry that relies on that as much as it does on the comedic aspect of it. It’s obviously going to do very well with the televoters, and depending on how everything else splits up, on balance it might be enough for the Swedes.

Last but not least, with an outside shot, is our host, Switzerland! Another candidate for the “might just be high enough on both vote sets” winning method. Probably more likely to do well with the juries rather than in televote, but if I had to pick a televote dark horse it’d probably be this one.

Prior to the shows I also had the Netherlands on this list, but as much as I like it I don’t feel it’s going to be strong enough in either vote to pose a real threat, although a top 10 finish is still very much in play.

And that, dear readers, concludes our pre-contest blogging here on escgo! Remember you can join us in our legendary #esc chat tonight if you want to chat along with likeminded fans during the show – and however you choose to enjoy it, we hope you have a wonderful evening. May the best song win!