Malta's National Final To Be Held In January 2018

As with a handful of countries that have confirmed their participation for 2018, some have already started the search for their next ambassador. The broadcasting company behind it, TeleVision Malta have made an open call for songs which begins now.

For those wishing to take part in being Malta's next star have until now to September 2017 to submit their song or songs to the broadcaster. As well as this they will also need to pay a fee of 150 Euros. As with previous years there will be a total number of 16 songs competing for the honour of representing Malta. The national Final will take place in January, and the winner will be chosen 100% by Televote.

There will be three stages to the process. After the deadline in September, 60 of those songs will be shortlisted by a local jury. The second stage sees the song number cut down to half and 30 will be chosen by the local and international juries. The final stage will see them being whittled down to the final 16. In the event a singer has two songs, they will be asked to chose one of the two, and the composer and lyricist must then come up with a new song to make that figure 16.

The rules, as in other years are also the same. They are in brief:

I. Singers must be 16 years old by May 2018

II. No more than six performers on stage

III. Song must not exceed three minutes in length

IV. The song including music and lyrics must not have been released commercially before November 1st 2018

V. The Previous winner (Claudio Faniello) is not eligible to compete

VI. Authors and composers may be of any nationality

VII. All artists must be of Maltese Nationality, or have dual citizenship, in a group consisting of two or more people the lead artist must be Maltese or have dual citizenship.

Claudio Faniello represented Malta in 2017 with the song "Breathlessly" in Kyiv. Unfortunately she failed to progress from the second semi final where her song came 8th with the jury scoring 55 points, however the televoters penalised it giving it 0 marks. Can Malta's next representative do one better in 2018? Stay tuned to find out.

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