Monika Linkytė competing at the 'Pabandom Iš Naujo!' final
LRT
Monika Linkytė has been voted as the winner of 'Pabandom Iš Naujo!' 2023, and will be representing Lithuania at the Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool, with the song 'Stay'.
The final of Pabandom Iš Naujo! took place on the evening of Saturday 18 February, and was the glittering culmination of no less than 5 weeks of competition for the popular song contest in the Baltic country.
A combination of a public televote and a vote from an expert jury delivered their scores, and it was Monika Linkytė that achieved the sought-after victory on the night, with the song Stay.
It was a relatively long road to success for Stay, competing in Pabandom Iš Naujo!. An initial selection of 30 songs was reduced to 20 across 2 heats in January. And in the first 2 Saturday nights in February, these 20 entries were further whittled down to 10, through 2 semi-finals.
Monika has previously represented Lithuania at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 with the song This Time, a duet with Vaidas Baumila. They reached the Grand Final and finished in 18th place.
You can listen to the other 9 songs that made Saturday night's final lineup right here.
Monika Linkytė follows the 2022 Pabandom Iš Naujo! winner Monika Liu, with her song Sentimentai. The Lithuanian entry went on to reach the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, giving its country a 14th-place finish.
Lithuania performs in the Second Semi-Final of the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in May.
Lithuania in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Lithuania joined the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994, unfortunately scoring nul points with its first-ever entry.
Following Lithuania's debut in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994, the country withdrew from the competition and only returned in 1999. The singer Aistė represented the country with the song Strazdas which was sung in Samogitian, a dialect of the Lithuanian language.
Lithuania scored its best placing in 2006, 6th place, with We Are The Winners performed by LT United. The country has only made it to the top 10 in the Grand Final once since then, in 2016 with Donny Montell's I've Been Waiting For This Night.
