Finland: YLE sheds light on next year's UMK edition; Submission window to open on September 1

Finland: YLE sheds light on next year's UMK edition; Submission window to open on September 1
Tuesday, 16 June 2020

  • The Finnish national broadcaster, YLE, has announced some details regarding the next edition of UMK, the country's Eurovision national final format. 

    Following this year's UMK national final , YLE, will be selecting next year's Eurovision hopeful through the traditonal format of UMK. The Finnish boradcaster has shed some light on some details of the 2021 edition regarding the submission period, the revelations of acts and time of the national final.

     

     

    Interested acts/composers will be able to send in their musical proposals for Eurovision 2021 from September 1 until September 7, 2020. The pre-qualifying  songs of the national final will be conducted again by a panel of experts from UMK, chaired by Tapio Hakanen, Music Manager at YleX .

     

    YLE has released the rules for next year’s national final which can be found in three different languages, in Finnish, Swedish and English. Further more the broadcaster has informed that the UMk 2021 finalists will be unveiled in January 2021 with the final itselft to take place in February 2021. 

     

    Finland in Eurovision

    Finland has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 53 times since its debut in 1961. Finland won the contest for the first time in 2006 with Lordi's "Hard Rock Hallelujah". The country's best result before then was achieved by Marion Rung with the song "Tom Tom Tom" in 1973, which placed sixth.

    Finland has finished last in the contest eleven times, receiving "nul points" in 1963, 1965 and 1982. Since the introduction of the semi-finals in 2004, Finland has failed to reach the final eight times. In 2014, the country had its best result in eight years when Softengine finished 11th. In 2015, Finland finished last in the first semi-final with the shortest-ever Eurovision entry, "Aina mun pitää" performed by Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät.

    This year Aksel won the national final with the song “Looking Back”.  As the competition was cancelled due to the covid-19 pandemic, Aksel has confirmed that he will be back at next year's UMK edition with a new song.