Contestants
The newcomers to the Contest were Bulgaria and Moldova, while Hungary returned after a hiatus since their last entry in the 1998 contest. Lebanon was also expected to make a début with the song "Quand tout s'enfuit", performed by Aline Lahoud, but was forced to withdraw after announcing they would show commercials over the Israeli entry. Many of the favourites with bookmakers; notably Iceland, Belarus, and the Netherlands; failed to qualify from the semifinal in perhaps the biggest shock of the year's contest. It is also notable that Ireland, the only seven-time Eurovision winner, failed to qualify for the final. In the final itself, the host Ukraine along with the so-called 'Big 4' (Spain, United Kingdom, France, and Germany – the biggest contributors to the European Broadcasting Union, who automatically qualify) occupied the bottom five places of the scoreboard, the first (and only) time in Eurovision history such a thing happened to those countries.
Read more about this topic: Eurovision Song Contest 2005