Albania To Select Lisbon Entry December 23rd

Albania recently confirmed their long standing show Festivali i Kenges will be used once again to select their Eurovision entry, and have now announced the dates the shows will be taking place over.

As usual FIK - which will be entering it 56th edition this time around will be taking place late December, with the two semi finals taking place on December 21st and 22nd, with the final itself on December 23rd.

RTSH will be accepting submissions from November 2nd up to and including November 10th, the only restrictions on the entries of note are the song must be in Albanian and not exceed four minutes in length.

The final number of entries brought forward in previous editions have always changed, 2016, it was 24 and in 2015, 30 were brought forward, also last year was the first edition in each a public vote was introduced to the contest, their votes were combined as a extra jury member and votes were presented in the same format as the other jury members, which included Albania's first ever entry Anjeza Shahini, it also showed the Albanian public did note vote Lindita Halimi as their winner but instead Dilan Reka with his song "Mos Harro"

Lindita Halimi won the 55th edition with her song Botë, which was later translated into English for Eurovision in Kyiv, she won the show with an impressive 31 point lead ahead of second place, however that impressive margin in Albania could not help her in Kyiv as she sadly finished outside the top ten in the first semi final and therefore did not advance to the Grand Final.