Whelp, time for semifinal 2 and me reviewing them as they show up on TV. And this is rating based on my own personal tastes obviously.

1. Bulgaria: Dara - Bangaranga
2. Azerbaijan: JIVA - Just Go
3. Romania: Alexandra Căpitănescu - Choke Me
4. Luxembourg: Eva Marija - Mother Nature
5. Czechia: Daniel Žižka - Crossroads
6. Armenia: SIMÓN - Paloma Rumba
7. Switzerland: Veronica Fusaro - Alice
8. Cyprus: Antigoni - Jalla
9. Latvia: Atvara - Ēnā
10. Denmark: Søren Torpegaard Lund - Før vi går hjem
11. Australia: Delta Goodrem - Eclipse
12. Ukraine: LELÉKA - Ridnym
13. Albania: Alis - Nân (I do think this has good chance of winning, but that's irrelevant to my own tastes)
14. Malta: AIDAN - Bella
15. Norway: Jonas Lovv - Ya Ya Ya

Pre-qualified for finals (also what I call as cheaters, it's a reference to post about semifinal 1):

1. France: Monroe - Regarde (I wish I could give negative points, hate songs like these... but I got lazy with programming the rating system.)
2. Austria (Host): COSMÓ - Tanzschein
3. United Kingdom: Look Mum No Computer - Eins, Zwei, Drei

I think the intro was the funniest part of the whole show today. It's a shame they don't do stuff like that more often, because almost all of these songs this year sucked. It's like they forgot fun is an emotion people are allowed to have. I hope ESC Asia will be better which is happening in November.

As my country is part of European Union.. It is time for ESC 2026 obviously. And I figured, I should rate all the songs as I watch it, just to see how well my tastes actually align with rest of EU. I won't be doing rating same as ESC does (you can look up how rating works in ESC if you want), instead I will be using scale from to .

Oh and I posted this without knowing who won or lost, because I don't care about that, it's pointless politics anyway, there is very little emphasis nowadays on the actual musical performances. I won't care about the politics with my ratings, it is solely based on my own personal enjoyment of the song... Which probably will just show how damn picky I am when it comes to music.

Anyway.. here is my ratings:

1. Moldova: Satoshi - Viva, Moldova!
2. Sweden: Felicia - My System
3. Croatia: Lelek - Andromeda
4. Greece: Akylas - Ferto
5. Portugal: Bandidos do Cante - Rosa
6. Georgia: Bzikebi - On Replay
7. Finland: Linda Lampenius & Pete Parkkonen - Liekinheitin
8. Montenegro: Tamara Živković - Nova zora
9. Estonia: Vanilla Ninja - Too Epic To Be True
10. Israel: Noam Bettan - Michelle
11. Belgium: Essyla - Dancing on the Ice
12. Lithuania: Lion Ceccah - Sólo quiero más
13. San Marino: Senhit - Superstar
14. Poland: Alicja - Pray
15. Serbia: Lavina - Kraj mene

Pre-qualified for finals:

1. Italy: Sal Da Vinci - Per sempre si
2. Germany: Sarah Engels - Fire

Disappointed there wasn't any proper meme songs.. I guess Greece could be considered one though but it was too repetitive to the point of being annoying, I would have rated it but the repetition made me rate it lower. And lot of the songs were too long for their own good, had they ended 30 seconds earlier, I would have enjoyed them more.

I don't like that whole pre-qualify thing btw, just because they paid little bit of money, somehow they can cut in line? Stupid... Just plain stupid. Anyway... I will be posting again for second semifinal on thursday. And for the finals... I'll probably post some stuff about it after ESC '26 is over because I think it will be interesting to see how well my tastes aligned with the consensus.