Tonight sees the broadcast of the Eurovision semi-final as 22 countries compete for ten places on Saturday's final.
The final ten will join last year's winner and the highest scoring countries - including Ireland - along with the four largest countries in the competition to make a total of 22 entrants in the 49th Eurovision Song Contest.
Swedish group Abba will also make an appearance on tonight's semi-final, reuniting for the show 30 years after they won the contest with the song 'Waterloo'.
Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog will appear in a pre-recorded video, which also features caricature puppets of the foursome singing some of their hits. The video will also include a cameo appearance by Cher.
Andorra, Belarus, Denmark, Macedonia, Croatia, Israel, Greek Cypriot side, Lithuania, Monaco, Serbia-Montenegro, Ukraine, Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Estonia, Finland, Holland, Switzerland, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Greece will all perform at the qualifying round tonight.
The ten qualifiers will be decided by a public vote involving most of the 36 Eurovision participants, and announced at the end of tonight's qualifying round.
Ireland's entrant is 24-year-old Waterford native Chris Doran, singing 'If My World Stopped Turning'.
The song was written by former Westlife member Bryan McFadden and Jonathan Shorten (ex-Culture Club).
The semi-final will be broadcast on RTÉ Network 2 from 8pm tonight.
