10 highlights from 2024's Eurovision pre-selection season
27 June 2024 at 17:30 CESTAhead of the 68th Eurovision Song Contest, we got to enjoy a 6-month window during which the 37 participating broadcasters presented their competing entries. Some of them opted for an internal selection, pairing a hand-picked artist with a song that all parties deemed perfect. While others went down the pre-selection route - handing the choice over to the public.
Of the 37 songs that took part in Malmö, 22 of them were selected via a televised national final, with viewers in those countries getting to have a say in which entry would go on to represent them on the international stage.
Malta's pre-selection was the first to kick off, with show one of the semi-final stages of Malta Eurovision Song Contest happening in October 2023. Czechia's ESCZ was next to start the ball rolling in December. And by the end of the year, Albania's annual Festivali i Këngës had also commenced (and wrapped!).
From January 2024 onwards, a weekend wasn't to go by without at least one (and in some cases as many as 7!) national final shows to get engrossed in; up until the second weekend of March, when Portugal's Festival da Canção found its 2024 winner in the early hours of Sunday morning.
With 22 national song competitions, that's a lot of potential bangers on our hands. And as always, the participating broadcasters didn't fail to deliver the goods - offering up hundreds of songs in as many genres as you can imagine. Many of those that failed to win, did go on to become chart smashes in their own country. And many more have ended up as welcome new playlist additions for Eurovision fans across the world.
By now you'll have already heard all of the winners of the 22 pre-selections that were held ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest in May. But to give you an idea of what our participating broadcasters are putting out there every year, here's a small selection of just some of the songs that didn't make it to Malmö.
10 pre-selection gems from the 2024 season that you might have missed:
Luxembourg Song Contest 🇱🇺
One Last Time - Devil In The Detail
Luxembourg returned to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2024 after a lengthy absense, and got right into the spirit of things by holding a national final to find the country's first Eurovision entry in 31 years.
8 songs competed for the rare honour, including this hard rock hallelujah from the band One Last Time (most definitely not to be confused with Oslo 96's One More Time!).
Eesti Laul 🇪🇪
Anet Vaikmaa - Serotoniin
Estonian broadcaster ERR held its annual Eesti Laul competition in 2024, this year consisting of one semi-final and a 10-song final.
This retro-hued, rock-flavoured anthem from Anet Vaikmaa served as a real serotonin-booster in February's final.
Benidorm Fest 🇪🇸
Almácor – Brillos Platino
Spain's Benidorm Fest brought some fresh tech to national final season, courtesy of the performance of Brillos Platino by Almácor. Viewers were treated to some eye-popping visual effects as they tuned in to what was the Spanish pre-selection's third edition.
6 months later and the song lives on - RTVE have made Brillos Platino the official anthem of their coverage of the Spanish national team at this summer's UEFA Euros tournament. And at the time of writing, that's been working out quite well for the team!
Melodifestivalen 🇸🇪
Jacqline - Effortless
Sweden's 30-song, 6-week pre-selection ended with the Melodifestivalen final of 12 songs taking place at Friends Arena in Stockholm.
One of the finalists was Effortless by Jacqline, on her very first participation in the Swedish national final. Three of its writers were also behind the winner of the 67th Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool - Loreen's Tattoo.
Dora 🇭🇷
Eugen - Tišine
After two semi-finals sliced down 24 songs to a more compact 16, Croatia's Dora final was broadcast to viewers in late February. In what was an early insight into just how well it would do in the Eurovision Song Contest televote, Rim Tim Tagi Dim by Baby Lasagna picked up 95,800 votes from the Croatian public in the final - which was more than the other 15 songs combined.
Amongst the eclectic selection of other songs on offer, we cherished a new gem of the beloved Balkan ballad genre - Tišine by Eugen.
Festival di Sanremo 🇮🇹
Annalisa - Sinceramente
The 74th edition of Italy's Sanremo took place over 5 consecutive nights in February, with a whole host of former Eurovision artists in the lineup: Mahmood, Il Volo, Diodato, Emma and Ricchi e Poveri.
Another performer in the mix was Annalisa, who was taking part in Sanremo for a 6th time. Her song Sinceramente finished in third place, and has gone on to become a big favourite in the Eurovision fan community, as well as a huge hit for her at home in Italy.
Eurosong 🇮🇪
AILSHA - Go Tobann
Ireland’s experience at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2024 was one for its history books, with Bambie Thug’s Doomsday Blue giving the Emerald Isle its highest placing (6th in the Grand Final) since 2000, as well as its highest points tally (278) of all time.
Also on the table for Ireland, however, was what would have been another kind of entry into its Eurovision history books. Go Tobann by AILSHA finished in joint second-place at Ireland’s pre-selection in January. Had it gone one better and scored victory, we would have seen the first Eurovision song performed in the Irish-language since 1972.
Das Deutsche Finale 🇩🇪
Marie Reim - Naiv
On a Friday night in mid-February, Germany held its one-show national final. In amongst the 9 songs taking part was one in a sound and style that will have been comfortably familiar to most viewers watching at home - German schlager!
Naiv was the first schlager song to have been included in a German national final in many years. But its artist - Marie Reim - already had some links to Eurovision… Her mother Michelle gave Germany a Top 10 finish at the Contest in 2001, with her song Wer Liebe Lebt.
Melodi Grand Prix 🇳🇴
KEiiNO - Damdiggida
We could potentially have seen plenty of familiar faces at Malmö 2024; throughout pre-selection season, we had over 20 Eurovision icons make a bid to return to the Contest. In the end though, just two were successful in their attempts - Natalia Barbu for Moldova and Hera Björk for Iceland.
Over in Norway, we had the 2019 Contest's Grand Final televote winners return to participate in Melodi Grand Prix - the band KEiiNO. Their song Damdiggida finished in second place on 244 points, just below the winning score of 250 achieved by Gåte's Ulveham.
Vidbir 🇺🇦
NAHABA - Glasss
For the guest performances at its 2024 national final, broadcaster SUSPILNE invited back a welcome selection of former Ukrainian Eurovision stars, with Ruslana, Jamala, Kalush Orchestra, TVORCHI, Verka Serduchka and Tina Karol all performing live for viewers on the night.
The 11-song Vidbir final included Glasss by the duo NAHABA, who have described their sound as an experimental mix of Ukrainian neofolk with different genres, including witch house, folk, breakcore and gabber. And it certainly didn’t sound like anything we got to hear at Malmö 2024!
Here at Eurovision.tv, you can follow pre-selection season every year. As well as revealing the winners of each final, we'll also be publishing previews of each of them ahead of time - so that you can listen to the selection of songs competing and find out which ones you're going to be rooting for to claim that ticket to Switzerland 2025.
Our pre-selection previews also serve as an easy guide on how to watch. We publish all of the details of the broadcast, including where online you will be able to stream it on the night.
Keep checking back here in the coming months for announcements, dates and details!
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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