Iceland | Söngvakeppnin Returns, With A Minor Change
Last week Iceland announced despite calls and rumours that the broadcaster would boycott the contest taking place in Israel that they will indeed compete, and today they have announced their selection format Söngvakeppnin will be used once more.
RUV announced the semi finals will be taking place on February 9th and 16th, with the final taking place on March 2nd 2019, however this year only five songs will be taking part in each heat as opposed to the usual six per heat, this means the total number of songs has dropped from twelve down to ten and is the lowest number to feature in the selection since 2008 when only eight songs competed in a straight one show final. Composers and artists can submit songs up to October 22nd to the contest.
Although not confirmed or denied we can assume RUV require the same from its composers as in previous years which is submit potentially two cuts of the same song. The Icelandic selection calls on all entries to be performed in Icelandic in the semi final, and if the song progresses to the final, then they have the choice to perform the song in whichever language they intend to take the song to the Eurovision stage with, many artists do often switch languages from semi finals to the finals, with the majority changing to English, the last entry performed in Icelandic was back in 2013.
Last year Ari Olafsson represented Iceland with his song "Our Choice" and sadly did not advance to the final, placing 19th in the semi final, and scoring nothing with the public vote, Iceland have not made it out of the semi finals since 2014. You can watch an interview Clara did with Ari out in Lisbon back in May below.
