Semi-finals were introduced at Eurovision in 2004, and they changed the contest's structure forever. From that year on, every country except the Big 5 (UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) and the host has had to earn its place in the Grand Final by surviving a semi-final. Twenty-three contests later, the qualification record is one of the cleanest measures of who has Eurovision figured out and who doesn't.
What the rate measures. A country is counted only when it actually competed in a semi-final. Years when a country was pre-qualified for the Final — as host, as Big 5, or under the 2004-2007 rule that gave the previous year's top 10 a Final pass — don't count either way. The denominator is semi-finals entered; the numerator is semi-finals survived. Disqualifications before the Final (such as the Netherlands in 2024) are excluded.
The 100% club has one member. Ukraine is the only country that has never failed a semi-final. Twenty entries since 2004, twenty qualifications — a perfect record across two decades, two host stints, and the country's competition exile and return. Sweden sits second on 95.45% (21 of 22), having missed only once across the entire semi-final era. Russia's 93.75% (15 of 16) is frozen in place since 2021; the country has not competed since its 2022 expulsion. Bosnia & Herzegovina rounds out the 90%+ tier on 90.00% (9 of 10) despite a long absence from the contest.
Australia's anomaly. Since debuting in 2015, Australia has competed in 11 semi-finals and qualified from 8 of them — a 72.73% rate that puts it ahead of Israel, Lithuania, Denmark and Finland. The geographically distant entrant has only missed the Final three times in eleven years. Delta Goodrem's qualification from Vienna's first semi-final pushed the rate up 2.72 percentage points.
The strugglers and the zeros. At the bottom, three countries have never qualified: Andorra (0/6), Monaco (0/3) and Slovakia (0/4) — combined 0 for 13. None have competed in over a decade. Montenegro sits one tier up on 14.29% with just 2 qualifications from 14 attempts, both more than a decade ago. San Marino has reached the Final only 4 times in 16 attempts (25.00%) — Senhit's 41-point flop in semi-final 1 dropped the rate 1.66 points.
The 2026 voting reform: juries return to the semis. Between 2023 and 2025, Eurovision semi-finals were decided by televote only — a producer-driven choice meant to reward viewer-friendly performances. For 2026, the EBU reintroduced national juries to the semi-final voting (50% jury, 50% televote), restoring the same split used in the Grand Final. The effect was visible in Vienna: jury-friendly Sweden survived with a low 96 points in semi-final 1, while televote-magnet entries faced tougher scrutiny. Whether the change keeps the perennial qualifiers (Greece, Norway, Serbia) at their historical 80%+ levels or compresses the field is the question every bookmaker will be modelling for Sofia 2027.