Eurovision Hotties World Cup - THE FINAL

It's second semi-final day, but it's something more important for two of tonight's performers - it's the final of the ESC Nation Eurovision Hotties World Cup.

In the hours leading up to tonight's live show, Nathan Trent and Imri Ziv will be competing on Twitter to judge who is the hottest male artist in this year's competition.

32 guys have been whittled down to two over a number of rounds - who will emerge victorious in today's final? Will it be the wholesome, boy-next-door looks of Austria, or the Instagram thirst-magnet from Israel?

Enjoy the pictures below, then vote in the poll at the bottom of the post and make sure you're following our Twitter feed for the results later.

#eurovisionhottiesworldcup - THE FINAL! Who's the hottest guy at #eurovision 2017? @imriziv or @uptrent? Vote now!

— ESC Nation (@ESCNation) May 11, 2017

Eurovision Hotties World Cup - Semi-final 2

After a busy first day of rehearsals, it's time for a little break. And what better way to get your breath back than to spend a few minutes looking at pictures of attractive boys and deciding who's the hottest? It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Semi-final 2 - Imri Ziv vs Alex Florea

The second semi-final is between Israel's Imri, one of the pre-contest favourites, and Alex Florea from Romania, perhaps a surprise to have made it this far. But as we saw today, surprises can happen in this game.

Imri made it to the semi-finals after topping his group with more than half the votes. He then went on to easily defeat Manel Navarro in the second round (lots of Mirela fans voting there, it seems), and then knocking out another favourite, Robin Bengtsson, in the quarter-finals. Meanwhile Alex Florea also won his group, though that was a group where two people voted for Jacques Houdek as their Eurovision hottie. Alex then easily beat host Oleksandr Skichko in the second round, before meeting Finland's Lasse Piirainen in the quarter-finals.

Once again, it's now up to you to peruse the photos below, choose your favourite and vote in our Twitter poll. Votes will close on Monday evening.

#eurovisionhottiesworldcup Semi-final 2. Vote for your favourite #eurovision hottie to move forward to the final!

— ESC Nation (@ESCNation) April 30, 2017

Make sure you follow us on Twitter to see the results and all our updates from Kyiv.

Eurovision Hotties World Cup - Semi-final 1

Do you follow ESC Nation on Twitter? If you do, you might have been following along with our Eurovision Hotties World Cup, our mission to find this year's hottest (male) Eurovision contestant (or host).

We started with 32 guys in contention in the group stages, 16 of whom made it through to the knockout rounds. Now, after the round of 16 and the quarter finals, four competitors remain.

Semi-final 1 - Nathan Trent vs Francesco Gabbani

The first semi-final is a battle between two very different hotties, as fresh-faced innocence from Austria takes on the personality and charisma from Italy. Francesco came into the competition as one of the favourites, but hasn't had an easy journey to the semi-finals. It was tight between him and two of our hosts in the second round and the quarter final, and in both cases he only just squeezed past Timur Miroshnychenko and Volodymyr Ostapchuk. By contrast, Nathan's had a much smoother run, which culminated in beating Hovig with almost 75% of the vote in the quarter finals.

Take a look at the photos, and vote in the Twitter poll below, which closes this evening.

(We initially intended to introduce shirtless pics at this stage of the competition, but, well, there aren't any. Not that we could find anyway. If you know better, please send them our way on Twitter or by letting us know in the comments.)

Vote, and make sure you're following us on Twitter for the results!

#eurovisionhottiesworldcup Semi-final 1. Vote for your favourite #eurovision hottie

— ESC Nation (@ESCNation) April 30, 2017

Azerbaijan favouritism? A response

Over the last couple of days there have been accusations flying across the interwebz, that certain Eurovision fan-sites were paid by the Azerbaijani delegation to write positive things about their entry.

We can now unequivocally state that this was not the case for ESC Nation. We received no champagne, no petits-fours, nothing to say nice things about Farid while we were in Malmö.

We just really like Farid's arms.

Norwegian drummer for you!

Hurray! Hurray! It's a Farid, Farid Day!

It's Farid Day!

Disappointingly, Farid Mammadov kept all his clothes on today, both during the rehearsal and at the meet and greet afterwards, so we decided to make up for that and select five of our favourite Farid photos, presented here for your viewing pleasure.










Hi Farid!

Sam and Sild's hotties list (1)

Since we're nearly at the end of the first rehearsals, we figured it was time to start compiling our first hotties list of 2013.

Reigning champion Pasha Parfeny is back in an attempt to hold on to the crown, but he faces stiff competition from some of today's dancers. Hi Pasha!


Ryan Dolan (no, no, he's not on the list) has three shirtless dancer-drummers behind him, in varying states of oiled-up-ness. We don't actually know who any of them are, and haven't yet learned to tell them apart, so they'll have to share a place for now.

(edit: we can now tell them apart! One of them is old and a little swarthy, and we have a favourite. #5. That's him on the right looking like a giant.)

Belarus pleased us this morning, bringing along two Serbian boys with big arms and making them wear tank tops. We approve. When they came along to the Euroclub later they had unfortunately been allowed to wear sleeves, which is a crime they hopefully won't repeat on stage. We were less impressed by their backing singer on stage, but we're allowed to change our mind, right? Especially when cute blond boys wear nice-fitting white t-shirts and smile at us.


We knew Moldova were bringing Pasha (who looks to be wearing The Pants today, by the way), but we hadn't reckoned with them bringing three other potential list-makers with them. They were very sweet, and even posed for a photo for us! And conveniently, they're even numbered. Our current favourite is #5 again.


Who are we missing? Who should we be looking out for tomorrow (other than Farid, of course)? And how am I going to get Danish flute-boy into the list without Sild seeing?

(*speaking of eurovision.tv, there's a potential list-maker among them too. But we won't tell which one - we'll leave them to discuss that among themselves!)

Hi Slovenian dancer!

That is all.

Hi Pasha

Hei hei