Dara Doozy

Jun 3, 2026 by Rob

Lots of people have been requesting a betting review of Eurovision 2026. Finally, here it is. It’s taken a long time to piece together mainly due to post-ESC ill health.

Ten days in Vienna resulted in total exhaustion as much as it was a thoroughly invigorating experience to be in attendance once more in the on-site press centre.

Going into the arena for the first TV rehearsal of semi-final one is the new starting point for ESC analysis. Forget early photos and rehearsal roundup videos – revisit Bulgaria’s by the way, and you could never have guessed what lay in store across the full three minutes.

These clips offer an incomplete picture, are often misleading, and merely serve to feed misinformation, and false market moves, for the most part. Much like putting your trust in some random ESC delegate who has watched the stand-in rehearsals and provides opinions on the stand out stagings in his view.

I recall wandering into Crystal Hall in Baku in 2012 and Daniel Gould saying to me, ‘That’s all we need to concern ourselves with, Rob’ nodding in the direction of a TV monitor at the side of the stage. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time but the penny dropped in an instant.

Fast forward to semi-final 2 first TV rehearsal, ESC 2026 on the Wednesday afternoon, and seeing Dara perform ‘Bangaranga’ for Bulgaria on the TV monitor. The initial reaction was, the song sounded so different. There had been a revamp and it was strikingly improved. But above all else the stage show was absolute dynamite.

Dara’s aura shone so brightly, her facial expressions perfectly on point, the up close camerawork was impeccable, and the choreo truly inventive.

As a viewer you were drawn in from the get-go and mesmerised throughout. The whole thing was brought to life spectacularly well, and it was another feather in the cap of Fredrik Rydman.

It probably goes straight into the top three in the last 15 years or so, in terms of unconsidered entries completely transformed live on the ESC stage, alongside The Common Linnets in 2014 and Eleni Foureira in 2018.

‘‘Bangaranga’ will seek to emulate Noa Karei’s ‘Unicorn’, 3rd in 2023, aided by a clever stage presentation’ was written here back in March. That was always the reference point but in truth, I was hugely skeptical arriving in Vienna. Then May 13 happened.

It was a reminder one of the most important qualities you need to have as an ESC analyst is the ability to change your opinion. It’s easier said than done a lot of the time, especially following months of intense scrutiny in the lead up to the main event that inevitably leaves you at risk of confirmation bias.

Heading to Vienna, my thinking was Greece could challenge for the win as the potential televote behemoth (outside of Israel), and Australia as the jury juggernaut.

The Greek staging was highly original and enormous fun. On first seeing it I was sold. But after watching it in the Tuesday evening TV semi-final my enthusiasm waned.

It left the impression of going too far into novelty territory; jury anathema essentially. Some of the key messaging at the climax, projected behind Akylas, wasn’t clearly delivered either. Bad camera angles, fuzzy font choice and all.

What we saw this year with Albania was full subtitles. Why other countries with meaningful foreign language songs don’t apply this same simple method to get the story across remains a mystery.

Australia on the Thursday night went the other way to Greece. It was always one that felt like banker material to deliver the goods live, and its price ended up dropping from 20 to below 4, opening up the crucial window to green up the book.

It’s incredible to look back on the perceived dominant five countries this year the Winner market was fixated by (ignoring Israel): Finland (6th), Greece (10th), France (11th), Denmark (7th), Australia (4th). With only Australia managing to achieve a top 4 finish among the five, this was a proper boil over in the world of Eurovision betting.

In recent years there has been a growing confidence in the accuracy of Eurojury, Eurovisionworld and whatever other fan poll barometers you want to throw into the mix. This year, emphatically, threw all this pre-rehearsal data out of the window. It was a wake up call to treat fan sentiment with extreme caution.

We had three commanding live solo female performances in the top four. This is a reminder you need to identify ESC artists who possess the magic x factor, but that x factor is a mercurial thing. Many thought Monroe had it for France, and Akylas for Greece but they both fell away.

We had three returning nations this year: Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova. They ended up 1st, 3rd and 8th. There’s often an ESC betting angle to get returnees on side but few could have predicted that level of success.

Bulgaria was only fifth on the jury rankings in semi-final two before jumping up to first in the grand final. Romania was sixth, only 7pts behind, before dropping down to 13th in the grand final.

It’s interesting to mine down into the jury scores for Bulgaria. Among the 16 nations that gave it jury points in the second semi-final, 11 increased their jury scores in the grand final, four decreased their scores, and one stayed the same (the Danish douze points).

The most intriguing element in Bulgaria’s grand final jury enhancement is, there has been a sense of juries coalescing around one nation in recent years, to ensure Israel doesn’t win. In 2024 it was Switzerland, in 2025 Austria, and this year it turned out to be Bulgaria.

Yes, it’s disappearing down the rabbit hole but in the ‘anyone but Israel’ mindset the EBU must be carrying into the grand final, whatever the machinations that go on, it does look like Bulgaria almost earned TCO ‘the chosen one’ status.

The introduction of younger jury members this year undoubtedly also turned out to be a handy boost to Bulgaria on the jury side.

‘The biggest surprise here was Belgium getting through. This makes you wonder about the impact younger jury members might be having this year, and provides food for thought moving forward.’ These proved prophetic words written in the May 14 article previewing semi 2.

Where the ESC betting community was largely unified this year, and proved correct, was in thinking Finland was a dubious, fragile favourite. That didn’t stop Finland going odds-on on grand final day. It’s the third successive odds-on fav to be beaten.

It’s interesting to note the growing influence of Polymarket on the Betfair ESC Winner market. Where Polymarket now leads, Betfair follows. There was one big whale operating on Polymarket this year who bought around $250k shares in Finland and who single-handedly knocked its price down, as much as Finland was a big fan favourite.

He ended up sitting on a potential $70k paper profit and by all accounts sold off only about 10% of his overall Finland position, so lost heavily.

Looking back over the last 16 Contests, Bulgaria is up there alongside Azerbaijan 2011 and Ukraine 2016 as the biggest priced winner on the morning of the grand final. But it probably has more in common with two entries that ultimately came up short in Netherlands 2014 (2nd) and Cyprus 2018 (2nd).

It’s a little surprising that Bulgaria, as the semi-final two winner, and with Dara pulling out ‘producer’s choice’, was given the 12 slot, compared to where Romania (also producer’s choice), the semi-final two runner-up, was placed in 24.

It was still a good position, mid-show, with the TV audience fully engaged. Romania’s outstanding Alexandra Capitanescu probably deserved to finish runner-up, and she managed to grab the televote initiative late in the show. The harsh jury score for Romania in the grand final remains a head-scratcher.

Looking back, there were a lot of ’emperor’s new clothes’ entries at the top of the market this year and it became the perfect storm for a ‘shock’ winner to emerge.

From widely perceived also-ran pre-rehearsals, Bulgaria became the first country since Portugal 2017 to win both the jury vote and the televote. And its convincing victory perfectly encapsulates the joyous uncertainty that still exists at Eurovision.

The market upsets were widespread this year. Semi one was considered to be Finland (3rd) vs Greece (7th) for the win with Israel ending up winning it, and Poland finishing second.

In semi two, the market thought it was Denmark (5th) vs Australia (3rd) for the win. Bulgaria ended up winning from Romania in second, both drawn early in 1 and 3.

The jury winner was considered to be Australia vs France vs Denmark vs Finland, and then Bulgaria came along and topped them all, matched as big as 800 on Betfair.

On the televote winner market it was Israel (3rd) vs Greece (6th) according to the odds. Bulgaria and Romania made a mockery of that, Bulgaria available to back at 100-1 to win the televote on the Thursday.

The big take home from this year was a reminder – everything changes when rehearsals get underway and the live execution of entries still matters greatly. And with that in mind, you need to allow your thoughts to be in a state of constant flux.

The overriding lesson is an age-old one: the markets can get things wrong, never be afraid to swim against the tide, and it is always best to stick with your own convictions.

Graham Norton on live commentary in the UK expressed his bafflement at the Finnish staging. That always felt the most questionable aspect. He also kept referring to the odds.

A few other observations: Czechia should have had a re-run due to the technical issues with the picture quality which really did destroy the spell. And it was a clever touch by Satoshi lead singer Vlad Sabajuc having ‘373’ on his sports top, the international dialling code for Moldova.

We had ‘car crash Kasey’ back in the day at ESC 2014 for Ireland. If there was one comparable this year, it was Antigoni for Cyprus, but that didn’t stop her picking up 47 jury points and 75 televote points to qualify in 10th place. In some cases, counter-intuitively, live performance doesn’t matter.

That also applies to this year’s Lithuanian entry, as Lion Ceccah was truly awful during the jury rehearsal on the Monday evening but managed to earn 46 jury points and 55 televote points for his off-key caterwauling, to qualify in 8th place.

There had been a growing risk of Western European monopolisation in recent years. Bulgaria winning for the first time, and becoming the first Balkan winner since Serbia in 2007, will hopefully lure back more Balkan nations next year, with North Macedonia already confirming its return.

It was late in the afternoon on grand final day this year. Absolutely shattered, always the case come the Saturday, I managed to muster a final, brief email to subscribers:

‘… getting more and more of a feeling about Bulgaria… I think it might be Bulgaria who could spring a complete shock and win tonight.’

And it’s the Bulgarias of the TV betting world that make the pursuit feel so worthwhile. There must be something in the Viennese air because 2026 turned out to be a vintage trading year, the same as 2015, also held in the Austrian capital.

Like World Cups, we end up measuring our lives in Eurovision years. As Durhamborn (a big Balkan winner this year too) so pertinently wrote in the Comments section: ‘More than anything, enjoy it. Each one we watch is one less we will watch in our lives. Always remember that.’

On a final note, Honest Betting Reviews has carried out an independent review of EntertainmentOdds subscription services and you can read all about it here.

As often explained to non-betting people, you will always get things wrong in this game, especially when trying to unearth ‘value’ investments, but if you get more things right than wrong, you will forge long-term profit, which this site is proud to have achieved for subscribers over the course of more than a decade now.

ESC 2027, presumably in Sofia, is sure to come round quickly, and hopefully we’ll all be around to do it all again next year.

Enjoy the summer and peace out.