Croatia: HRT announces changes in the national final 'Dora 2021'

Croatia: HRT announces changes in the national final 'Dora 2021'
Tuesday, 27 October 2020

  • The Croatian broadcaster, HRT, has shed more light on next year's national final of Dora 2021 revealing  several changes comparing to last year's  edition. 

    Croatia will be selcting its Eurovision 2021 entry via the national competition Dora 2021. With the covid-19 pandemic escalating HRT has introduced some changes to adjust to the current needs for security. 

    The most important change is that instead of 16 songs this year 14 songs will compete on Dora. In addition , four entries will be selected as reserves in case their is a withdrawal before the rehearsals kick off in Opatija. After that, if there is a withdrawal, no replacement will take place.


    Furthermore, there can be a maximum of five people on stage (instead of six as before), and all backing vocals must be pre-recorded, not performed live. This is a rule that the Eurovision Song Contest allowed as an option for 2021, and HRT decided to include it in the national final rules.

    Changes that are not conditioned by the current epidemiological situation are: it is allowed to sing, apart from Croatian, in any European language (so far the rules allowed only English, Italian, German and French). Everyone can apply for the competition, the applicants should be citizens of the Republic of Croatia and must not be younger than 16 years of age.


    The address for applications is https://www.hrt.hr/dora/prijava  and the deadline for submissions is December 10 while the Croatian national final will take place  13 February in Opatija. 

     

    Croatia in Eurovision

    Croatia debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993 with the group Put and their entry Don’t ever cry.  In 1996 Maja Blagdan and in 1999 Doris Dragovic, finished in 4th place in the Grand Final, marking the country’s best results so far in the competition.

    In 2018 Croatia selected internally Franka Batelic to represent the country in Lisbon with her song Crazy. Despite her dynamic performance she failed to qualify to the Grand Final.

    In 2018, Croatia determined its Eurovision act through the return of national selection “Dora”.  Roko won Dora 2019 and represented Croatia at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest with his entry The Dream. Despite his amazing vocal performance the Croatian artist didn’t make it to the final.

    Damir Kedzo won this year's national final with his entry "Divlji Vjetre" but never had the chanece to perform on the Eurovision stage in Rotterdam as the contest was cancelled due to the covid-19 pandemic. 

     News Source/Image: HRT