We meet Benjamin here in Lisbon – go watch our Complete the sentence interview or his performance at Eurovision Village.

Sweden is competing in the second semi-final as start number 15. They are represented by Benjamin Ingrosso and the song Dance You Off, which is written by Benjamin himself together with MAG, Louis Schoorl and K Nita

Gallery

Dress rehearsal

Second Rehearsal

Michael, United Kingdom( from the arena) For the second year in a row Sweden bring a stage set up that takes forever to get ready. The multi coloured fluorescent lights shine like an oversized old electric fire in the middle of the stage. They’ll be hoping he gets first on in the finals. And to the finals he should go with this Bieber like number. Pulsating like a disco in the arena, no one can do Eurovision like Sweden….except Azerbaijan with Swedish people

Josef, Czech Republic (from the press centre) Sweden had some technical problems with Benjamin’s props on the stage, but hopefully this will not happen on Thursday. Sweden is one of the favourites from the second semi-final and I can’t see this as a non qualifier. This is one of the songs that will go easy to the final with no problems.

Eurovision Village

Complete the sentence interview

First rehearsal

If you’re expecting a fresh performance coming from Sweden, don’t waste your time as Benjamin Ingrosso is recycling his Melodifestivalen performance in the Eurovision stage in Lisbon. The same happened with Robin Bengtsson last year when he brought the same performanc to Kyiv.

The lights, the moves and even the camera angles are exactly the same. In the press room, some had an Internet page opened of his Melodifestivalen performance so they could compare the two of them and, yes, the result was positive as they were pretty much the same performance.

Vocally speaking, Benjamin is also as good as he was in the Swedish national selection if not better as he was joined by a human choir – not present on stage.

How Benjamin Ingrosso was selected

28 songs had been selected from an open submission. The songs were divided into four heats from where two made it direct to the final, and another two went to a second chance heat. From the second chance heat, the songs met in duels, and the four winners advanced to the final.

By a combination of public voting and 11 international juries, the Swedes decided that Benjamin wins the final on the 10th of March. He won with both the juries and the public. Runner up was Felix Sandman and his Every Single Day, which actually came from the second chance heat.

Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest

With two wins within the past seven years, Sweden is catching up on Ireland’s record with seven Eurovision victories. Sweden is now only one down.

Since the introduction of semi-finals in 2004, Sweden only failed to reach the final once. By a coincidence that was in 2010 where Anna Bergendahl’s This Is My Life finished 11th in the final, and where Denmark came 4th in the final with a song rejected for the Swedish selection!

Since 2014, things however have been extremely impressive with not finishing outside top 5 at all in this period. First Sanna Nielsen came third in 2014, then Måns Zelmerlöw won in ’15 and finally both Frans and Robin Bengtsson finished 5th.