Eurovision 2026 Results: How Bulgaria Won After Drifting to 148/1
TL;DR: Bulgaria won Eurovision 2026 with 516 points, beating Israel by 173. That is a wide margin. The bigger story is the odds: Dara's "Bangaranga" drifted to 148.25 on May 11 — essentially written off — before collapsing back to 11.36 by Saturday afternoon, after qualifying from Semi-Final 2 and the May 15 jury show. The pre-final favorite, Finland (2.02 closing), finished 6th. Of the top 10 in the closing winner market, only three (Israel, Romania, Italy) finished better than the market predicted; the rest missed by an average of three places.
The Final Result (Top 10)
| Rank | Country | Artist — Song | Points | Pre-final odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 1 | 🇧🇬 Bulgaria | Dara — *Bangaranga* | 516 | 11.36 |
| 🥈 2 | 🇮🇱 Israel | Noam Bettan — *Michelle* | 343 | 15.43 |
| 🥉 3 | 🇷🇴 Romania | A. Căpitănescu — *Choke Me* | 296 | 19.23 |
| 4 | 🇦🇺 Australia | Delta Goodrem — *Eclipse* | 287 | 3.48 |
| 5 | 🇮🇹 Italy | Sal Da Vinci — *Per sempre sì* | 281 | 45.64 |
| 6 | 🇫🇮 Finland | Lampenius & Parkkonen — *Liekinheitin* | 279 | 2.02 |
| 7 | 🇩🇰 Denmark | S. Torpegaard — *Før vi går hjem* | 243 | 35.77 |
| 8 | 🇲🇩 Moldova | Satoshi — *Viva, Moldova* | 226 | 109.93 |
| 9 | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | Leléka — *Ridnym* | 221 | 117.54 |
| 10 | 🇬🇷 Greece | Akylas — *Ferto* | 220 | 13.54 |
*Pre-final odds = average closing price across 13–14 bookmakers tracked by WhatOdds.io, taken from the last snapshot before the Grand Final aired. Compare current odds →*
The full final standings (positions 11–25) sit at the bottom of this post.
Bulgaria's Odds Journey: A V-Shape Nobody Saw Coming
This is the chart that explains the night. Average daily price (decimal odds) for Bulgaria across the entire cycle, drawn from our historical snapshots:
| Date | Avg odds | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 12 (opened) | 14.78 | Modest 3rd-tier price on song reveal |
| Feb 28 | 20.17 | Slow drift through national-final season |
| Mar 2 | 48.15 | Sharp drift after pre-party reactions |
| Apr 1 | 62.15 | Hovering, market disengaged |
| May 5 | 75.15 | Vienna rehearsals begin |
| May 11 | 148.25 | Peak drift — effectively written off |
| May 14 | 39.04 | Qualified from Semi-Final 2 — sharp money piles in |
| May 15 | 29.43 | Jury show — second leg of the collapse |
| May 16 | 10.61 (close 11.36) | Closing price on the day of the final |
From 148.25 → 11.36 in five days. That is a ~92% implied-probability swing — about as violent as anything we have logged in a Eurovision cycle. And it all happened *after* the prior six weeks where Bulgaria barely moved.
What the chart tells you, in plain language:
1. Pre-rehearsal markets were wrong, but quietly. Bulgaria opened reasonably short at 14.78 — the market did sense *something* — then drifted hard from early March through May 11.
2. The May 11 peak coincided with the SF1 hype window, when capital was chasing Finland, Greece and Croatia. Bulgaria fell out of every conversation.
3. The repricing was a two-step process, not a single leak. Roughly half the move happened after SF2 qualifying on May 14; the other half after the jury rehearsal on May 15. Both windows are where sharp Eurovision money typically moves, and this cycle they moved together in the same direction.
For why rehearsal-week and jury-show signals matter more than headline odds, see Eurovision 2026 odds history: what actually predicts the winner.
Predicted Rank vs Actual Rank: The Market's Scorecard
If you ranked all 25 finalists by closing odds and compared each predicted slot to where they actually finished, this is the result. Negative delta = the entry finished worse than the market expected; positive delta = better.
| Predicted | Actual | Country | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | 🇫🇮 Finland | −5 |
| 2 | 4 | 🇦🇺 Australia | −2 |
| 3 | 1 | 🇧🇬 Bulgaria | +2 🏆 |
| 4 | 10 | 🇬🇷 Greece | −6 |
| 5 | 2 | 🇮🇱 Israel | +3 |
| 6 | 3 | 🇷🇴 Romania | +3 |
| 7 | 7 | 🇩🇰 Denmark | 0 |
| 8 | 5 | 🇮🇹 Italy | +3 |
| 9 | 18 | 🇲🇹 Malta | −9 |
| 10 | 11 | 🇫🇷 France | −1 |
| 11 | 16 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | −5 |
| 12 | 20 | 🇸🇪 Sweden | −8 |
| 13 | 8 | 🇲🇩 Moldova | +5 |
| 14 | 9 | 🇺🇦 Ukraine | +5 |
| 15 | 13 | 🇦🇱 Albania | +2 |
| 16 | 15 | 🇭🇷 Croatia | +1 |
| 17 | 19 | 🇨🇾 Cyprus | −2 |
| 18 | 14 | 🇳🇴 Norway | +4 |
| 19 | 25 | 🇬🇧 UK | −6 |
| 20 | 12 | 🇵🇱 Poland | +8 |
| 21 | 17 | 🇷🇸 Serbia | +4 |
| 22 | 22 | 🇱🇹 Lithuania | 0 |
| 23 | 23 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 0 |
| 24 | 21 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | +3 |
| 25 | 24 | 🇦🇹 Austria | +1 |
Biggest market misses (underperformers)
🇲🇹 Malta (−9): Priced 9th, finished 18th. The cleanest "the market overpaid" miss of the night.
🇸🇪 Sweden (−8): Confirmed it has lost the room. *My System* qualified from SF1 then died with juries; 51 points, 20th. Continues the post-2023 pattern covered in Sweden Eurovision 2026 odds.
🇬🇷 Greece (−6) & 🇬🇧 UK (−6): Greece slid out of the top tier despite a clean ride from SF1. The UK finished last by margin — *Eins, Zwei, Drei* converted 1 point.
🇫🇮 Finland (−5): The 2.02 favorite. *Liekinheitin* still scored 279 points — strong absolute number — but the market priced near-certainty and 6th place is a long way from that.
🇨🇿 Czechia (−5): Drifted in during late rehearsal week and ended one tier below where books had it.
Biggest market wins (overperformers)
🇵🇱 Poland (+8): Priced 20th, finished 12th — quietly the biggest beat of the night.
🇲🇩 Moldova (+5) & 🇺🇦 Ukraine (+5): Both sat in the 100+ outright tier all cycle and converted into the top 9. The diaspora-and-jury combination Eurovision routinely under-prices.
🇳🇴 Norway (+4) & 🇷🇸 Serbia (+4): Quiet climbs from the back half of the field.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria (+2): Smaller delta than you'd expect because the market *did* eventually reprice Bulgaria to 3rd favorite — they just didn't take it all the way to the top.
Why The Favorite Lost — Finland, France and the Pattern
Finland closed at 2.02 (49.5% implied) and finished 6th. That is the second time in three years the heavy pre-final favorite has missed (Sweden was 5/2 in 2025 and Austria won). Two structural factors recur:
1. Single-lane scoring risk. Heavy favorites usually win on jury *and* televote; *Liekinheitin* over-indexed on one and didn't carry the room. Bulgaria, Israel and Romania each looked like they collected meaningful points from both lanes — that is what 516 / 343 / 296 totals usually mean.
2. Late-stage drift on auto-qualifiers. Finland, France and Italy (the auto-qualifying Big 5) all had no semi-final to confirm their stage was working. France in particular kept drifting from 7.59 on April 29 to 73.79 at the close — 11th place was actually a *positive* surprise vs that line.
This pattern is exactly what the Eurovision 2026 odds-history post flagged in February: the favorite wins about 50% of the time across the last ten contests, and dual-path entries with steady cross-book consensus beat single-lane front-runners more often than the headline odds suggest.
Eurovision 2027 — Bulgaria Hosts
By tradition, the winning broadcaster hosts the next contest. Eurovision 2027 will be held in Bulgaria, with BNT taking the host-broadcaster role. Three cities have already declared bids — Sofia (the capital), Burgas (with the new 15,000-capacity Arena Burgas, opened 2023) and Plovdiv. Sofia and Burgas are the only ones with arenas meeting the EBU's 10,000-capacity minimum.
Our Eurovision odds page is already preparing for 2027 — we'll start tracking opening prices as soon as bookmakers post them, usually within a few weeks of the host city being confirmed.
Want the 2027 opening odds the moment they drop? The signup card on this page (right rail on desktop, top of the page on mobile) drops Eurovision 2027 prices straight into your inbox before the wider odds-comparison cycle begins.
Full Final Standings (Positions 11–25)
| Rank | Country | Artist — Song | Points | Pre-final odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | 🇫🇷 France | Monroe — *Regarde !* | 158 | 73.79 |
| 12 | 🇵🇱 Poland | Alicja — *Pray* | 150 | 350.64 |
| 13 | 🇦🇱 Albania | Alis — *Nân* | 145 | 164.85 |
| 14 | 🇳🇴 Norway | Jonas Lovv — *Ya ya ya* | 134 | 223.50 |
| 15 | 🇭🇷 Croatia | Lelek — *Andromeda* | 124 | 167.15 |
| 16 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | Daniel Žižka — *Crossroads* | 113 | 84.07 |
| 17 | 🇷🇸 Serbia | Lavina — *Kraj mene* | 90 | 357.79 |
| 18 | 🇲🇹 Malta | Aidan — *Bella* | 89 | 66.92 |
| 19 | 🇨🇾 Cyprus | Antigoni — *Jalla* | 75 | 191.38 |
| 20 | 🇸🇪 Sweden | Felicia — *My System* | 51 | 105.64 |
| 21 | 🇧🇪 Belgium | Essyla — *Dancing on the Ice* | 36 | 489.93 |
| 22 | 🇱🇹 Lithuania | Lion Ceccah — *Sólo quiero más* | 22 | 393.50 |
| 23 | 🇩🇪 Germany | Sarah Engels — *Fire* | 12 | 432.79 |
| 24 | 🇦🇹 Austria | Cosmó — *Tanzschein* | 6 | 516.08 |
| 25 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom | Look Mum No Computer — *Eins, Zwei, Drei* | 1 | 287.43 |
Sources & Methodology
Final results: backfilled into our database directly from the official Grand Final scoreboard on May 17, 2026.
Closing odds: last snapshot per country before the Grand Final aired (May 16, 19:00 UTC), averaged across 13–14 bookmakers tracked by WhatOdds.io.
Historical odds journey for Bulgaria: daily aggregate of all snapshots since the first one captured on Feb 12, 2026.
Predicted-rank delta: bookmaker closing-odds rank vs official final rank.
Related reading:
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won Eurovision 2026?
Bulgaria won Eurovision 2026 in Vienna with Dara performing "Bangaranga", scoring 516 points in the Grand Final on May 16, 2026.
How big was Bulgaria's winning margin?
Bulgaria won by 173 points over Israel (516 vs 343). That is the kind of gap that signals dominance in both the jury and televote, not a tight finish decided by the final vote announcement.
What were Bulgaria's odds before the final?
Bulgaria closed at 11.36 average odds (best price 9.00) — the third favorite behind Finland (2.02) and Australia (3.48). That sounds close, but five days earlier, on May 11, Bulgaria was trading at 148.25 — essentially written off. The market only repriced after Bulgaria qualified from Semi-Final 2 on May 14 and the jury show on May 15.
Who finished second and third at Eurovision 2026?
Israel (Noam Bettan — *Michelle*) finished second with 343 points, and Romania (A. Căpitănescu — *Choke Me*) finished third with 296 points. Both were priced well outside the top five before the final — Israel at 15.43 (5th in odds), Romania at 19.23 (6th).
Where will Eurovision 2027 be held?
Following the traditional rule that the winning country hosts the next contest, Eurovision 2027 will be held in Bulgaria. The host city will be confirmed by BNT and the EBU in the coming months.
Where can I see the historical odds for every country?
Live and historical odds for every Eurovision country are tracked on our Eurovision odds page. Each country's page shows the full price movement across the cycle.
Read Next
Eurovision 2027 Host City: Sofia, Burgas or Plovdiv? Bulgaria's Race Begins
Three Bulgarian cities have already bid to host Eurovision 2027: Sofia, Burgas, and Plovdiv. Only two arenas in the country meet the EBU's 10,000-capacity minimum. Full breakdown of the race.
Eurovision 2026 Jury vs Televote: Bulgaria Wins Both — First Time Since 2017
Full jury vs televote breakdown for Eurovision 2026. Bulgaria wins both lanes for the first time since Portugal 2017. France: 4th jury, 18th televote. Three countries get zero points from the public.