Day 9 saw a couple of hours of rehearsals in the morning, followed by around six hours at this year’s Orange Carpet event. Yes, the Eurovision Song Contest hasn’t had traditional Red Carpet since 2017 – last year’s carpet was blue in Lisbon.

So yesterday morning saw the second set of rehearsals from Israel, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Was there many changes? Still disappointed in the approach Spain have taken towards their staging – it doesn’t give off the energy it should do in my opinion. The United Kingdom have added pyrotechnics, which add to the section when Michael Rice and the Backing Singers form a circle near the end of the performance. What I’ll add at this point is pyrotechnics aren’t cheap. This is why they are normally added during only one or two of the run-throughs during second rehearsals.

The Orange Carpet was the last big event before the live shows take place this week. We managed to chat to a number of the stars – including Ireland’s very own Sarah McTernan. Some of the stars were more interested in speaking to Staggy, our newest team member, instead of us – have a look for his photo gallery later on the site, once it goes online. While we sadly didn’t get to chat with Duncan Laurence, we did get to chat to the other favourites – Bilal, Sergey and Chingz – look out for our Orange Carpet coverage later on the site too.

Author: Richard Taylor

Source: Eurovision Ireland