Come Together: Allocation draw, theme art and slogan for Eurovision 2016 revealed

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest theme art, a Dandelion flower (or an Ikea lamp!) and the Beatles sounding slogan Come Together was revealed today where also the allocation draw took place. The speculations about who will qualify for the final can now begin.

Theme art and slogan

First up today was the revealing of the theme art. This year’s theme art is based on the colours blue and pink and a big dandelion of shining seeds which come together and form a unity.The logo is made by the agency INGO. Their Art Director Rikard Holst explains that “The symbol is a dandelion with reverse function. It is made up of small seeds, coming together from all over Europe to gather in our magical flower and visualize the positive energy that occurs when the music’s joy and power come together at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2016“.

We however are sure that it won’t be long before fans will start making the theme art with a Maskros lamp from Ikea instead as the similarity is quite big.

The slogan for this year’s contest is Come Together, so the rumours that started yesterday about it being a Beatles song title indeed was true.

Big5 + host voting

At today’s allocation draw which took place in the City Hall of Stockholm, the same venue which will be used for the opening reception of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The automatically qualified countries, host country and the so called Big5, was given a semi-final in which they will be voting. They will not compete in the semi-finals, but they have to broadcast it and to vote.

Voting in semi-final 1: Sweden (decided beforehand by EBU), Spain, France

Voting in semi-final 2: Germany (on request from broadcaster), United Kingdom, Italy

Semi-final allocation draw

The semi-finalists were drawn first into a semi-final and after that into first or second half of that semi-final which will be from where they will be starting. Their exact starting number will not be known before all countries have submitted their entries and the visual wishes for those. Based on that the producers will plan the best order of performances – with the only guarantee to the countries that they stay in the half they were drawn into. The producer deciding order was something which this year’s host country Sweden introduced last time they were hosting the contest, which was in 2013.

Semi-final 1:

Country First or second half
Croatia First half
Finland First half
Moldova First half
Armenia First half
Greece First half
Hungary First half
F.Y.R. Macedonia First half
Russia First half
The Netherlands First half
San Marino First half
Azerbaijan Second half
Cyprus Second half
Malta Second half
Bosnia & Herzegovina Second half
Estonia Second half
Czech Republic Second half
Montenegro Second half
Iceland Second half
Austria Second half

Semi-final 2:

Country First or second half
Latvia First half
Belarus First half
Ireland First half
Switzerland First half
Australia First half
Lithuania First half
Poland First half
Israel (by request) First half
Serbia First half
Albania Second half
Bulgaria Second half
Denmark Second half
Romania Second half
Georgia Second half
Slovenia Second half
Norway Second half
Ukraine Second half
Belgium Second half

The countries were before the draw placed in pots based on voting pattern.

Pot 1: Albania, F.Y.R. Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Pot 2: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia

Pot 3: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine

Pot 4: Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Australia, The Netherlands, Bulgaria

Pot 5: Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ireland, Malta, Poland, San Marino

Pot 6: Austria, Hungary, Israel, Moldova, Romania, Switzerland

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