Hungary | A Dal To Return As Selection Format

They've featured in the final every year since 2011, and are one of the last countries to confirm for Tel Aviv, but today MTVA announced Hungary will compete in Eurovision 2019 and in doing so announced a call for songs for A Dal 2019 - where the winner will represent Hungary in Israel.

A Dal has been used as Hungary's selection format since 2012, and they have qualified every single year the format has been in place to select their entry, one of more unique national final formats where acts perform to a group of three jury members who score the song on a scale of one to ten on their own personal opinion, during the performance the public can also vote with their own one-to-ten rating, the average rating from the public is rounded up to a solid number and that is added to the jury score, giving the act a total out of 40. From there the top four (in the heats) or top three (in the semi finals) advance on, the remaining acts then have to wait as the phone lines reopen for a short period for the remaining songs, the winner of the reopened televote advances to the next round as a public wildcard. In the final it gets even more unique when the jurors cut the remaining eight acts down to four, awarding 10, 8, 6 or 4 points to their top four, one the top four is decided the public solely pick the winner from the final four. In the past A Dal has been criticised for this method with people saying it gives too much to the jury and the power to eliminate a fan favourite, which was evident this year when eventual winners AWS barely qualified into the top four with only eight points, when the top three qualified with 36, 30 and 28 points respectively.

Acts have until 8th November to submit their entries with a further deadline of December 14th to submit any final versions, similar to last year MTVA are only looking for acts and singers in Hungary who have either released music album or had tv appearances or radio airplay on a national level, also all acts submitting must be of a professional music management or be in a contract and with a label.

Last year Hungary were represented by rock band AWS and their song "Viszlát Nyár" (translated as Goodbye Summer) despite being a hit amongst many fans, they only qualified out of the semi final in 10th place and finished 21st in the final. Check below our interview with AWS in Lisbon by our Spanish correspondent, Clara.