Russia: Channel 1 confirms Eurovision 2021 participation

Russia: Channel 1 confirms Eurovision 2021 participation
Monday, 28 September 2020

  • The Russian national broadcaster, Channel 1 ( C1) has confirmed that it will be taking part in the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest next May in Rotterdam. 

    Channel 1 has confirmed to ESCToday that the nation will be participating in next year's edition of Eurovision in the The Netherlands. However it remains unknown the format the broadcaster will use in order to determine the country's representative, with more light to be shed on the seection formula the weeks to come. 

     

    Russia in Eurovision 

    Russia debuted in Eurovision in 1994 and has gone on to be one of the most successful countries in the contest. Since the mid-00s Russia has had a string of strong results including their first and only victory in 2008. Dima Bilan won the contest in Belgrade, Serbia with the song “Believe” taking the contest to Moscow in the following year. In 2015 and 2016, Russia finished in 2nd and 3rd place  in the final represented respectively by Polina Gagarina and Sergey Lazarev

    Julia Samoylova represented Russia in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with the song I won’t break. She was also selected to compete in the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest as a representative of Russia with the song A flame is burning, however due to some problems with the Ukrainian authorities, the country decided to withdraw ahead of the competition.

    In 2019  Sergey Lazarev was internally selected to represent Russia in Tel Aviv with his entry "Scream", achieving to finish in the honorable 3rd place in the grand final .

    In 2020 Little Big were set to represent Russia at the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam with ‘Uno‘. The pop funk group might not have had the chance to perform on the Eurovision stage in Rotterdam Ahoy but their entry has smashed the record of the most watched music video on the official ESC Youtube channel by reaching more than 155 million views.