With the increasing number of entries this year's Eurovision Song Contest consists of a preliminary qualifying round and a final round. 14 participants have directly qualified for the final round. They are the host nation (and 2003 contest winner) Turkey, the 4 main European Broadcasting Union members United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain, along with the top 9 of the remaining 2003 contest results: Belgium, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Iceland, Romania and Ireland. The remainder 10 participants are the top 10 of the qualifying round.
QUALIFYING ROUND (Wednesday 12 May 2004).
The 22 participants in this qualifying round are the participants returning from exclusion Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia, Finland, Switzerland, Lithuania, Denmark and Monaco, the lower-ranked countries from the 2003 ESC results Netherlands, Ukraine, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Greece, Israel, Cyprus, Estonia, Portugal, Slovenia, Latvia and Malta, and the debut countries Andorra, Albania, Belarus and Serbia & Montenegro.
The points score of the top 10 participants remained undisclosed until after the grand final. The participants proceding to the final round have been marked in red.
FINAL ROUND (Saturday 15 May 2004).
By means of televoting 12 points were allocated to the song gaining the most votes, 10 points to the song gaining the second highest number of votes, 8 points to the song gaining the third highest number of votes, 7 points to the next, and so on until 1 point to the song gaining the tenth highest number of votes. Each country still had a stand-by jury in place. The national jury's outcome will be applied if the telecommunications penetration rate is less than 80%. Also in case of any tie for any of the first ten positions, the order of the tying songs shall be ascertained by a show of hands by the jury members. If there is still a tie after show of hands, the final vote shall be decided by the vote of the youngest member of the jury.
