A total of 12 participants have entered in the Belarusian national final for the Eurovision Song Contest 2018.
It has been revealed that so far Belarusian broadcaster BTRC has received 12 applications for their Eurovision national final. The closing date for applications is December 26th, and the broadcaster is expecting to receive more entries before then.
BTRC is accepting entries from both Belarusian and non-Belarusian artists, lyricists and composers this year. The broadcaster has revealed that they have received entries from around the world. The selection will be held over two rounds, a live audition, and a national final. In the live audition, acts will perform in front of a jury, who will select no more than 15 acts to proceed to the national final. The results of the auditions will be revealed no later than January 14.
The national final is due to take place in February and will be hosted by Teo and Olga Ryzhikova. The final result will be decided by a combination of 50% jury votes and 50% public voting. In the case of a tie, the jury vote will take preference over the public vote.
Naviband represented Belarus in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 with “Historyja majho žyccia”. They were the first Belarusian act to perform entirely in the Belarusian language. They finished 17th in the final with 83, Belarus’ first appearance in the final since 2014.
Source: BTRC
Belarus debuted in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2004 and has made it to the final on four occasions. For the past two years, Belarus has failed to make it through to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. Their most recent entrant, IVAN, finished in 12th place in his semi-final and was 21 points away from qualification. Belarus’ best result in the contest came in 2007 when Dmitry Koldun finished 6th in the final with a total of 145 points. In total Belarus has qualified for the Eurovision final five times in fourteen attempts.
