With only three weeks left to the start of the Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv, the show’s organizers are finalizing the preparations.
The full schedule of the event has been released, and the stage is 95 percent ready to welcome the Eurovision guests, with only minor details left.
While the first semi-final contests will be held on May 9, the rehearsals will start as soon as April 30. The schedule is tight: during the first eight days, each country’s representatives will have press conferences, meet-and-greet sessions and only 20–30 minutes for a stage rehearsal.
All the Eurovision events will take place at the International Exhibition Center on the left bank of Kyiv. The center has a capacity of between 12,000 and 14,000 people, up to 7,000 of them sitting.
As many as 18 countries will compete in each of the two semi-final events on May 9 and May 11. Both semi-finals and the final will start at 10 p. m. Kyiv time, and will be broadcast by Ukraine’s national First TV channel, as well as on its website, www.1tv.com.ua/live.
Participants
Ukrainian pop rock band O. Torvald will skip the semi-final as the representative of last year’s winning country. The group moves directly into the final, as well as the participants from the five countries that founded Eurovision in 1956: Italy, Germany, France, United Kingdom and Spain. They will be joined by 20 semi-final winners in the Eurovision grand finale on May 13.
Despite Russia’s withdrawal from Eurovision, its contestant, Yulia Samoylova, is still on the schedule of the rehearsals and the second semi-final. Ukraine banned Samoylova from entering Ukraine for three years because she visited the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea illegally in June 2015.
Russia was offered to replace the contestant or have Samoylova perform via Skype, but the country preferred to withdraw completely and cancel the Eurovision broadcast on its TV.
The contest will feature guest performances by Ukrainians stars.
Experimental electronic band Onuka will perform at the final, according to the Eurovision organizers.
A Crimean Tatar singer Jamala, who won Ukraine the first place at the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm, Sweden, will perform her winning song “1944” during the first semi-final. The song is about the tragic events of Crimean Tatar history when the Soviet authorities ordered Tatars to leave their native region Crimea in 1944.
During the Eurovision final, Jamala will premiere her new song “I Believe In You.”
Tickets
The official ticket distributor in Ukraine Concert.ua still offers a bunch of the tickets for fan zone at the first and second semi-finals for 41 euros price. One could also find tickets for rehearsals for the semifinals, but no tickets are available for the live grand final show or its rehearsals.
Dmytro Feliksov, the director of Concert.ua, said on April 19 that more than 30,000 Eurovision tickets were sold. In total, the organizers issued around 70,000 tickets for all the Eurovision events.
The first and second batch of grand final tickets, released on Feb. 14 and Feb. 23, sold out almost immediately, with many people waiting for hours in an online queue still ending up with nothing.
Nevertheless, those looking for tickets can still find some options from scalpers — but for up to five times the price.
For example, typing “Eurovision tickets” in Russian or Ukrainian brings up an obscure website www.stubhub-ua.com.ua, which claims to have more than 100 tickets for all nine Eurovision shows, including the live grand final.
Another scalper website, tickethunt.net, offers tickets for the grand final starting at Hr 12,000 (418 euro) and VIP tickets for Hr 100,000 (3,487 euro). The same tickets were sold out for between 207 euros and 408 euros at the official website.
Ukrainian classifieds website OLX has more than 100 postings from people selling tickets for various Eurovision shows and rehearsals, including the final show, from Hr 8,000 (around 280 euro) to Hr 16,000 (560 euros).
