Michele Perniola & Anita Simoncini (San Marino 2015)

An 11th place to United Kingdom scored in 2011 helps them leave four countries behind them in the list of the worst scoring countries the past ten years. Only twice in the final and an 18th place as best result, San Marino however really needs to improve for the next decade.



Following our article from yesterday about the best scoring half this decade, we now finish with the ones who are ranked from 23rd to 46th.

Just like yesterday, we’ve thrown all the results together this decade and created a ranking for all countries taking part these past ten years. To find out how each country performed at the Eurovision Song Contest, we calculated an Average Relative Position for each country, for every year in the past 10 years. The full calculation method is explained below the list.

As always with calculations like this, they often give some surprising results. We’ll highlight a few of the things we noticed with this ranking of the worst scoring countries this decade:

Despite a victory in 2017, Portugal is down at #38. This is due to them only reaching the final on three out of their 8 participations this decade – and of course ending on a 26th place in 2018.

United Kingdom didn’t score as low as many fans probably expected. They have four countries, of which three still take part, behind them. In particular Blue’s 11th place in 2011 counts up for United Kingdom.

Germany has finished last or second last 4 times this decade, but they also have a win in 2010, and then a 10th, an 8th and finally a 4th place to bring them up the list to #25 – and as such actually quite close to the best scoring half.

Eurovision 2010 – 2019: Worst scoring countries this decade

With appearances from a total of 46 participants this decade, we have divided them into two half’s; best scoring and worst scoring. Yesterday, we brought you the 23 best scoring countries, and today it’s time to look at the worst scoring ones.

Rank Country Average Relative Position Times Participated 24 Lithuania 61,61% 10 25 Germany 61,75% 10 26 Israel 62,03% 10 27 Georgia 63,99% 10 28 France 64,05% 10 29 Albania 64,56% 10 30 Malta 64,88% 10 31 Iceland 66,92% 10 32 Poland 68,88% 8 33 Ireland 72,21% 10 34 Belarus 73,22% 10 35 Slovenia 74,17% 10 36 Spain 75,09% 10 37 Switzerland 75,23% 10 38 Portugal 75,65% 8 39 Finland 77,16% 10 40 Croatia 79,02% 8 41 North Macedonia 79,28% 10 42 United Kingdom 80,21% 10 43 Montenegro 80,25% 8 44 Latvia 80,85% 10 45 San Marino 85,14% 9 46 Slovakia 92,86% 3

These Relative Positions are calculated by dividing a country’s actual position by the lowest possible rank this country could have gotten that year, each minus 1. Semi-final positions are appended to the bottom of the Grand Final scoreboard, in such a way that an 11th position in a Semi-final results in a 27th position. The lowest possible rank in the 2019 first Semi-final would be 35. This would give that particular 11th position a relative rank of 29.41%.

The sum of all relative positions is then divided by the number of times that country took part, to come to the above listed Average Relative Positions. This results in the fairest possible way to compare Semi Final positions against Grand Final positions in the reality of Eurovision where not all countries come from a semi final, and not all semi finals have the same number of participants.