1+1 Production has won the public tender contract to produce Ukraine’s national selection for Eurovision 2024.
Back in August, Suspilne the Ukrainian national broadcaster announced a national selection would once more be used to select the Ukrainian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 in Malmö, Sweden. Suspilne also announced that Dmytro Shurov (Pianoboy) would once more be the producer of the Ukrainian selection for a second year.
It has now been confirmed by the Ukrainian public broadcaster that the production company 1+1 Production has won the public tender contract to produce this year’s national selection on behalf of Suspilne.
In the past from 2011 to 2014, Suspilne had awarded the production tender for its national selection to Savik Shuster’s Studio and from 2016 to 2021, STB. For the past two years 2022 to 2023 Suspilne organised the national selection on its own with the help of a production studio, this saw the format of the selection show move from a multi-show format with two semi-finals to a single-night affair.
The venue of this year’s national selection is not yet known, last year in 2023 the Maidan Nezalezhnosti metro station in Kyiv was used. The choice of a metro station was to mitigate the risk of air raids disrupting the show, with many other TV events in Ukraine such as the yearly Independence Day concert taking place in metro stations due to the ongoing conflict with Russia.
Vidbir 2024 will take place in February 2024 in the form of a televised concert. The jury and audience’s vote results will determine the winner and Ukraine’s representative in Malmö in May 2024.
Suspilne, the Ukrainian national broadcaster, has already revealed the finalists of Vidbir 2024 which were selected following two days of in-person auditions, a total of ten finalists were chosen for Vidbir 2024. The finalists are:
- alyona alyona & Jerry Heil – “Teresa & Maria”
- Drevo – “Endless chain”
- INGRET – “Keeper”
- MÉLOVIN – “DREAMER”
- NAHABA – “GLASSS”
- NAZVA – “Slavic English”
- SKYLERR – “Time is running out”
- YAGODY — “Tsunamia”
- YAKTAK — “Lalala”
- Ziferblat — “Place I Call Home”
An eleventh artist will be selected via a public vote from the longlist participants who were not chosen as finalists. The full list of finalists will be revealed by December 29.
Image Source: EBU / Corinne Cumming | Source: Suspilne / Kp.ua
Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest
Ukraine first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2003, when Oleksandr Ponomariov performed “Hasta la vista”. The following year Ruslana brought the country their first win with the song “Wild Dances”. It was a feat that would be replicated in 2016 by Jamala with her song “1944”. Her emotionally charged song scored a record 534 points to take victory in Stockholm. In 2017, O.Torvald represented the country on home soil with the song “Time”. The group finished in 24th place, Ukraine’s worst result at the contest to date. Kalush Orchestra gave Ukraine their third victory in 2022 with “Stefania”. Ukraine is the last remaining country with a 100% semi-final qualification record.
