The Eurovision Song Contest is heading into the home stretch. The second semifinal took place on May 15, with the final scheduled for Saturday. Out of a total 37 participating countries, 26 made it into the final.

As the biggest financial contributors to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which hosts the contest, Germany, Italy, the UK, France and Spain all received an automatic entry into the final, as did Switzerland as the previous year's winner.

The other participants are Norway, Luxembourg, Estonia, Israel, Lithuania, Ukraine, Austria, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Greece, Armenia, Malta, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Albania and San Marino.

A total of 160 million viewers from around the world are expected to tune into the broadcast from Basel at 9 p.m. local time and vote for their favorite act.

Before the week of competition, the artists from the 37 participating countries all gathered at the official opening ceremony last Sunday on the stage of the St. Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland. The event was designed to reflect the festive and inclusive nature of the competition. But it did not remain unclouded.

For this year's edition, the organizers came up with something special. Instead of having the artists walk across a turquoise Eurovision carpet in the presence of accredited journalists and selected fans, they organized a parade through the city center.

The participants presented themselves on a turquoise catwalk in front of the town hall, then got into vintage cars and retro streetcars driving them along the almost 1.5-kilometer (around 1 mile) route over the Rhine bridge to the contest venue — accompanied by brass bands, traditional costume groups and carnival clubs — strolling past some 100,000 spectators.

Those spectators lining the streets were holding the usual flags of the participating nations, as well as LGBTQ ........

© Deutsche Welle