A soaring duet between a star violinist and a studly Finn. An electro track sung by a man dressed as a cat. A disco song accused of sounding like the soundtrack to a Mafioso wedding.
All three are among the favorites to win this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday in Vienna, according to prediction markets and betting firms.
Here’s what to know about eight favored acts.
This year’s favorite is Finland, and it’s easy to see why.
Linda Lampenius and Pete Parkkonen’s “Liekinheitin” (or “Flamethrower”) ticks every Eurovision box.
It’s essentially a duet between Parkkonen, 36, a tanned Finnish pop star, and Lampenius, 56, a onetime violin prodigy, in which Parkkonen sings about his passionate obsession for a woman who treats him badly and Lampenius responds with forceful melodies on her instrument.
The competition doesn’t usually allow live instrumental performances, but Eurovision organizers have given Lampenius special permission to play onstage, given that her violin lines are so critical to the song.
This week, so much focus has been on Lampenius’s playing that some fans may have missed her struggles on the way to the Eurovision stage.
Lampenius was a crossover violin star in the 1990s, even making the cover of Playboy (which called her the “Brahms Bombshell”). But amid that success, Lampenius got caught up in a legal dispute with the Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard after she told a Finnish journalist that other women should be careful in his company.
Nygard sued her for defamation, demanding $10 million, an ordeal that the violinist said “ruined my life.” Since that time, however, Nygard has been sentenced to 11 years in prison in Canada for sexually assaulting four women.
For her part, Lampenius has in recent years signed a new major label deal and is now the favorite in Vienna.
“This is my revenge,” she said.
Australia
‘Eclipse’ by Delta Goodrem
Sometimes a Eurovision nation surprises everyone by sending a singer who seems to have little need of a fame boost. This year that person is Delta Goodrem, representing Australia, who shot to stardom as a teenager in the early 2000s starring in the wildly popular Australian soap “Neighbours,” and then as a singer of epic ballads.
So why is she at Eurovision with “Eclipse,” an soaring track that grows in momentum and volume with each verse?
Goodrem, 41, has said in interviews that friends asked her for years to enter the contest, and in 2025 she finally decided to try. Her approach in writing the song was to go as big as possible, she said this week in Vienna.
“When you’re doing Eurovision, I want a key change, I want high notes, I want wind machines, I want sparkles, I want surprises, I want it all!” Goodrem told Wiwibloggs, a popular Eurovision YouTube channel.
She took the same maximalist approach for the staging, she added. “I want pyro! I want fire! I want smog! I want lighting! And I want 7,000 sparkles on my dress!”
That method might work. After Goodrem’s semifinal performance on Thursday — which included her standing atop a golden piano — she was made second favorite.
Romania
‘Choke Me’ by Alexandra Capitanescu
It seems that every Eurovision has a lyrics controversy, and this year’s centers on Romania’s track: Alexandra Capitanescu’s “Choke Me.”
When the hard-rocking song appeared online in March, it enraged some women’s rights groups for its chorus in which Capitanescu sings, “All I need is your love / I want it to choke me, choke me, choke me.”
Landing at a moment when some experts have drawn attention to the dangers of choking during sex, the track shows “an alarming disregard for young women’s health and well-being,” Clare McGlynn, a professor at Durham University, told the Guardian newspaper at the height of the furor.
Yet Capitanescu has said that the song has nothing to do with sexual practices. The singer told one interviewer that she was struggling with anxiety last year and that her mother had said, “You have to stop choking yourself with these negative thoughts.” That comment helped inspire the song.
Eurovision organizers regularly order artists to change lyrics if songs are considered political or overly rude. But they haven’t made Capitanescu change a word, and Martin Green, Eurovision’s director, said that Capitanescu’s explanation was good enough for him. “There would be an irony, wouldn’t there, if we were not believing this woman,” he said.
The flap hasn’t seemed to hurt Capitanescu’s Eurovision chances. She’s many fans’ favorite.
Greece
‘Ferto’ by Akylas
Last fall, Akylas was fearing that his music career was over.
He had spent years trying to make it as a pop star and had two minor successes in his native Greece, but had also needed to work as a waiter and cruise ship performer to pay his rent. At that point, he was busking for tourists in Athens.
“It was the most difficult September in my life,” Akylas, 27, recalled in an interview. “I was like, ‘Maybe I should go back to the cruise ship.’”
Instead, he wrote “Ferto” (or “Bring It” in English). And now he is among the favorites to win Eurovision.
On the track, which mixes traditional Greek instruments with electronic bleeps, Akylas sings in Greek about wanting everything the world can offer, including diamond rings, submarines and lots of “sashimi tuna.”
“I want the summit, not just a step,” he sings.
Although the lyrics make him sound like an insatiable Disney villain, Akylas said they also reflected his working-class childhood desiring things that others had. And the lyrics chimed with the economic precarity that many Greeks experienced in the financial crisis that began in 2008. “A lot of my generation grew up feeling something was missing,” Akylas said.
With Eurovision stardom, does he have everything he sings about wanting in “Ferto”?” “The money, no,” Akylas said. “But that’s going to come!”
France
‘Regarde!’ by Monroe
The United States may not yet take part in Eurovision, but Americans still have a homegrown act to root for this year: Monroe, who was born and raised in Salt Lake City, is representing France.
The daughter of a French mother and American father, Monroe is singing, “Regarde!” a soaring track about falling in love in which she repeatedly shows off her operatic range.
If she wins, she will be the third singer in a row to use operatic skills to help secure the Eurovision title, following JJ of Austria and Nemo of Switzerland.
Monroe’s breakthrough came in France last year when she won “Prodiges,” a popular TV talent show for classical musicians, singing the renowned “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” Before she learned that she was going to Vienna, Monroe had planned to study music at a college or conservatory in the U.S., but she said in an interview that she had deferred offers to take part.
Still, she made time for an hour or two’s study a day while preparing for the Eurovision final, she said. “Learning in life is the most important,” the 17-year-old said.
Italy
‘Per Sempre Sì’ by Sal da Vinci
Italy usually sends its hottest young acts to Eurovision, like Maneskin, the snarly rock band that won in 2021.
This year, it has taken a different tack. It’s entry is Sal da Vinci, 57, a suited Neapolitan singer, performing “Per sempre sì” (“Forever Yes”), a disco anthem about the joys of marriage that sounds, appropriately enough, like a wedding dance-floor filler.
“With my hand upon my chest / I promise it to you / Before God / It will be you and me,” da Vinci sings.
Da Vinci said in a recent interview — alongside his wife of 37 years, Paola Pugliese — that he was “a bit of a traditionalist.” He married the woman of his dreams, he said, and they persevered through all the usual ups and downs.
But he said he hoped his song also appealed to more liberal listeners. “I’m talking about universal love,” da Vinci said. “Male, male; female, female. It’s not up to me to judge.”
Of this year’s Eurovision entries, “Per sempre sì” has the most Spotify streams. Yet the song has not been immune from criticism, with one Italian critic describing it as the soundtrack to a Mafia wedding.
Da Vinci said comments like those didn’t worry him. His song has touched so many people, after all — so why let a critic spoil it?
Israel
‘Michelle’ by Noam Bettan
Israel has a recent habit of sending power ballads to Eurovision, but this time the country is trying something different with “Michelle,” a more upbeat pop track by Noam Bettan, in which he sings about a toxic relationship over Spanish guitar and a shuffling Middle Eastern beat.
It’s also largely in French. “Adieu ma belle / Je te laisse partir / Mais je t’aime” Bettan sings in a typical excerpt. (“Goodbye my love, I’m letting you go, but I love you.”)
Bettan’s language choice stems from his French heritage: His parents emigrated to Israel from Grenoble, France, before he was born.
The 28-year-old’s appearance at Eurovision is the end point of “more than eight years of hard work, Sisyphean work,” Bettan recently told The Times of Israel.
Israel has won Eurovision four times, but the contest’s stage is a fraught place for any Israeli right now. Five countries that had called for Israel to be excluded because of its military actions in Gaza are boycotting the event, and Israel’s government was accused after last year’s contest of trying to influence the outcome. Israel’s public broadcaster, KAN, which selects the country’s Eurovision entry, said that all the promotions were within the rules, but Eurovision’s director said the campaign was excessive. This year, the organizers have updated the voting protocols.
During Tuesday’s semifinal, an audience member shouted “Stop, stop, the genocide,” throughout Bettan’s performance.
The Israeli singer told the BBC he had heard “booing and everything” and therefore “looked for the flags of the people who love me and want me to do my best, and that really carried me.”
Denmark
‘Foer Vi Gaar Hjem’ by Soren Torpegaard Lund
When Soren Torpegaard Lund entered Denmark’s Eurovision selection competition in February, he was third favorite to win out of eight. Chances were, he was going home with nothing.
But then he wowed the TV audience with his performance of “Foer Vi Gaar Hjem” (“Before We Go Home”), a pounding dance track about a night out, during which Lund climbed on top of a Perspex box filled with club kids and tried to smash his way inside.
He won easily.
For much of this week, Lund, 27, was third favorite in many bookmakers’ odds to win Eurovision, and he said in an interview that he hoped the coincidence was a favorable omen. “My room number at my hotel is also 333,” Lund said, “so I’m, like, ‘There’s something about this number.’”
Lund attributed the strength of his performance to his background in musical theater. He’s a musical star in his home country, having played the lead in a Royal Danish Theater production of “West Side Story” among other major roles.
Few musicals feature dance music like Lund’s Eurovision track, but the singer said that musical theater and Eurovision were “natural bedfellows.” In both, he said, you don’t have to act cool in the way that pop stars typically do.
You can be vulnerable onstage or flamboyant. You can whisper or scream. “You’re allowed to be who you want to be,” he said.
