Russia: National final to determine the Eurovision 2021 act and entry

Russia: National final to determine the Eurovision 2021 act and entry
Tuesday, 02 March 2021

  • The Russian national broadcaster, Channel One, has confirmed that they will hold a national final to determine the nation's Eurovision 2021 hopeful and entry.

    Ongoing reports the last days were speaking of a national final show that was planned in order to select the Russian Eurovision 2021 representative and entry. 

    Channel One has confirmed that the national final show will take place on March 8, 2021 at 18:00 CET. The show will durate circe one hour and will be aired on Channel 1, which hasn't revealed any other details regarding the competing acts and the selection format used. 

    This will be the first time since 2012 Russia will be holding a televised national final to select their Eurovision act and entry. While local reports want last year's ESC 2020 acts taking part in this year's national final, it still remains unknown whether the funky group will attempt to make a comeback for Rotterdam.

     

    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. 

    News source: Channel One

    Image: Eurovision.tv