Few hours to go. Tonight, 21:00 CEST, Wiener Stadthalle, Vienna. The 70th Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final is upon us. Over the last two weeks I've been writing about this contest from every angle I could — the lyrics, the fun stats, the network analysis, and the streaming numbers. All of it built on the data infrastructure I've been developing with my co-authors Alessia Morrone, Barbara Będowska-Sójka, Sabrina Giordano, and Claudia Tarantola. A lot has changed since I pub

After the lyrics analysis and the fun stats post, I wanted to try one more angle on Eurovision 2026 before Saturday's Grand Final. This time: a network. In the academic work I've been doing with my co-authors Alessia Morrone, Barbara Będowska-Sójka, Sabrina Giordano, and Claudia Tarantola, we use network analysis to study how countries vote for each other in Eurovision — who has voting alliances, who's culturally close, who sits on the periphery. That work is at the country l