The 2017 national selection season is in full swing. Information is coming in so quickly that it can be hard to keep up. Here we bring you the latest news from Israel, Georgia, Norway and Romania.
Below you can find the latest news from the national selections in Israel, Georgia and Norway. There are also news from Romania, which had been suspended from EBU services a few weeks before the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm. The Romanian participant was thereby forced to stay home.
Contents
Israel kicks off HaKokhav HaBa for Eurovision
Israel will use the same method as they have done in the last two years for choosing their next representative at the Eurovision Song Contest. HaKokhav HaBa is the Israeli version of talent show Rising Star. However, for the Eurovision Song Contest edition, they use the title The Next Star.
The 2017 edition of The Next Star of Eurovision will kick off on the 2nd of January. There is as yet no information on the date of the final and, as so we do not yet know when the Israeli participant for the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest will be chosen.
In recent years, Israel has had some success in the contest using HaKokhav HaBa for Eurovision. After four failures between 2011 and 2014, Nadav Guedj and Hovi Star made it to the Eurovision final. In 2015, Nadav even finished in 9th place.
All shows in Israel will be recorded before the broadcast, except for the final, which will be live. The decision on which act will advance to the next stage of each show will be made by televote and an expert jury. Eurovision 2010 entrant Harel Skaat will be in this jury, next to Keren Peles, Asaf Amdurski and the duo Static & Ben-El Tavori.
Georgia selects for Kyiv in 20th of January
The Georgian national broadcaster GPB has already announced its hopefuls for Eurovision 2017, and today we also got a date: its national selection will take place on the 20th of January in the country’s capital Tbilisi.
Georgia is returning to a national final after last year’s internal selection of Nika Kocharov and the Young Georgian Lolitaz. This year, a total of 25 songs will compete for the right to represent the country at the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest. The winner of the selection will be decided by 60% jury voting and 40% public televoting.
Norway collides with Sweden and Iceland for national final
The date for the national final in Norway has been confirmed by the broadcaster as the 11th of March. The ticket sale for the event starts tomorrow!
For its 2017 selection, Norway will only have one show. The show clashes with two other Nordic countries as Iceland and Sweden have their finals on the exact same evening. A lot of Eurovision fans will focus their attention on the Nordic countries that evening but which one will the foreign fans be following? Time will tell.
Previously, the Norwegian broadcaster revealed that it has a succesful weapon up its sleeves, which will help it towards winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017. For now, we are waiting to find out which of the 1,035 candidate songs received by the broadcaster make it to the Norwegian final.
Romanian entry to be decided on 5th March
The national selection of the country is Selectia Nationala 2017. It was announced earlier today that submission for songs starts on the 20th od December with a deadline of the 22nd of January.
Between the 25th and the 27th of January, the songs will be performed in front of an audience at the state broadcaster TVR studios in Bucharest. This pre-selection stage will be edited and televised as a separate program called Euroshow. A five member jury will select 15 entries, which will make it through to the semi-final stage.
A live semi-final will rake place on the 26th of February when ten finalists will be chosen by a jury. The final itself will take place a week later, on Sunday the 5th of March, with the Romanian representative to Kyiv being chosen solely by televoting.
