A record number of song submissions for Finland's 'UMK', returning on 8 February

Finland's recent trend of making its Eurovision pre-selection into an arena-scale event is all set to continue in 2025. 

On Saturday 8 February, Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK) will come to us live from the Nokia Arena in Tampere. On the night, we'll have 7 songs competing to be Finland's next Eurovision Song Contest entry, with a host of top-tier Finnish pop talent either participating, or providing guest performances. 

Tickets for UMK 2025 go on sale at 08:00 CET on Thursday 3 October over at lippu.fi/umk. 

And as in recent years, anyone attending won't just be getting to see the Finnish national final; a UMK pre-party has also been planned for the evening, as well as the all-important after party - with the dance floor staying open until 3am local time.

Finnish broadcaster YLE's commitment to building up UMK as a cornerstone of the Finnish music industry has resulted in huge audiences in recent years. 

UMK 2024 broke previous records once again; nearly 20,000 people witnessed UMK live at the Nokia Arena in Tampere, while 1.9 million Finns followed the show on television and almost a million international viewers joined in on the fun via the Finnish broadcaster’s streaming service Yle Areena.

Anssi Autio, UMK’s Executive Producer comments: 

“The UMK show, which has grown into an arena-scale event, exceeded expectations in many respects last year. There are high expectations for this year’s event, both among the UMK production team and certainly among the audience. Tampere proved to be a brilliant UMK host city last year. This year, we will be working even more closely with the city, which is expected to have a very boisterous UMK week in early February."

And it's not just audiences that are flocking to UMK in higher volumes than ever, artists want in on the action, too! For the 2025 edition of the Eurovision pre-selection, a record number of songs were submitted. 

485 songs were submitted to UMK 2025, which is a new high during the current format of the Finnish national final. This year, some changes were made to the selection process for UMK participants. In addition to the professional jury, consisting of music industry professionals, chaired by YleX’s Head of Music Tapio Hakanen, five audience juries were invited to select the artists and songs for UMK 2025. 

The UMK 2025 artists will be announced on Wednesday 8 January, and the 7 songs and their music videos will be released one at a time on weekdays from 9 to 17 January. 

At the past 4 Eurovision Song Contests, Finland has qualified for the Grand Final on each occasion. The Nordic nation finished in 2nd place in 2023 with Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä, and in 6th place in 2021 with Dark Side by Blind Channel. 

At the 68th Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö, Finland was represented in denim-clad fashion by Windows95man, with an explosive performance of No Rules!. 

You can listen to all 37 songs of Eurovision 2024 via your favourite streaming service or watch the music videos on our YouTube channel.

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