![](https://www.escunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Draw-finalist-2023-850x491.jpg)
It’s the closing days of the national final season, which means all the speculation will now happen and acts can polish their performance, ideas and whatever their hearts desire. It also means, that the Head of Delegation meeting has taken place, in which all the delegate representatives meet in the host city for the first time, where they get to see, hear and feel what the host city has to offer.
Running Order
Usually, what happens at the Head of the Delegation meeting every year, is that all songs are handed in to the EBU, and song picks are locked in for good. A lot of the things are minor details, just for the delegations, while not so much for the public to care about.
However, one thing that the public is always told about, is the start position for the “host” country. However, this year is a special occasion, with the champions not being able to host, so for the first time ever, the starting position for both was decided!
The United Kingdom was decided to pick their position first, which was done by the Ukrainian Head of Delegation. Here it was randomly picked, that Mae Muller will perform her song “I Wrote a Song” on the 26th position in the final, which will make it the closer of the contest.
In return, then it was time for Ukraine to be placed into the running order and this was in reverse done by the Head of Delegation from the United Kingdom. The favor was quite hard to return, but it turned over to be better than expected, by giving TVORCHI and their song “Heart of Steel” the 19th position in the final. Giving both the champions and the hosts a position in the second half of the final.
As for the rest, the remaining finalists will draw their position in the final, after their first rehearsal in Liverpool, which means we’ll have to wait quite a while before we know where the last 4 finalists will perform. These are Spain, Italy, Germany and France, and for good measurement, they will only picked the half they’ll perform in, rather than the exact position. The exact position is only done for the host/champion country, in order to avoid any ideas of favoritism by the organizers.
As for the 31 semi-finalists, they have all already been decided by the producers, in which semi-final and which half they would perform in, this was done back in January during the Semi-final Allocation Draw. With all the songs now being decided, the producers will place them in an order, in which each song can stand out from each other, based on their draw. The final running order list for the semi-final is expected to be released at the end of March.
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Source(s): Eurovision.TV