Estonia‘s popular national final Eesti Laul is getting a revamp for 2022. Broadcaster ERR has confirmed that the upcoming edition of the contest will now include quarter-finals and will involve 40 competing songs.
The news was announced on the entertainment show Ringvaade, and confirmed with a post on social media.
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The broadcaster confirmed that the show will expand, with more competing acts and more shows. Eesti Laul 2022 will now include quarter-finals — which could also be considered heats.
While the broadcaster hasn’t confirmed the precise format of Eesti Laul 2022, with 40 acts competing we could potentially see four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and the grand final.
ERR promises that it will release more information tomorrow about the Eesti Laul 2022, including the official rules.
Eesti Laul and Estonia at Eurovision
Eesti Laul debuted in 2009, replacing the former Euro Laul national final format. The first two editions of Eesti Laul involved ten acts that all competed in the grand final. The highest place two acts then competed in a superfinal which determined the overall winner.
From 2011, the contest doubled in size. 20 acts competed in Eesti Laul, with the show expanded to involve two semi-finals of 10 acts each, and a grand final of 10 acts. From the grand final, the highest two — and in later years three — acts then competed in a superfinal to decide the winner.
Then in 2019, the contest expanded again to accomodate 24 acts. The semi-finals involved 12 acts each, with 12 qualifiers heading to the grand final. The show also used a superfinal with the top three grand final acts.
Eesti Laul has brought mixed fortunes for Estonia at Eurovision. In the 12 editions of the contest (not including 2020), seven acts made it to the Eurovision grand final, while five acts didn’t qualify out of their semi-final.
The best results in the Eesti Laul era were Urban Symphony with “Rändajad” in 2009 and Ott Lepland with “Kuula” in 2012. Both entries placed sixth in the grand final. Also doing well were Elina Born & Stig Rästa who placed seventh with “Goodbye to Yesterday” in 2015 and Elina Nechayeva who placed eighth with “La forza” in 2018.
Two-time Eesti Laul winner Uku Suviste did not have the same luck at Eurovision. His 2021 entry “The Lucky One” placed 13th in its semi-final, meaning he did not make it to the grand final.
With 40 acts set to compete in the 2022 edition of Eesti Laul, Estonia will have more options to select from when picking their entry for Eurovision 2022.
What do you think? Is 40 acts too much? Or is bigger better? Who would you like to see competing in Eesti Laul 2022? Tell us your thoughts below!
Not sure if this is the right way to go after having failed miserably. though only time will tell if this works out well. with quarter finals in November already the Estonian entry will be first song of 2022 we hear – and unless there is an amazing tune among them that brings excitement like Russia 2016 or Italy 2017 then fans will be so tired of all the estonian songs by the time Eurovision airs and Estonia will be overlooked by the fan voters. so the only thing i can recommend is to bring back Urban Symphony. that said:… Read more »
I don’t get why some people here get upset. In fact nothing really changes. Of course there has been 40 songs and more in the past. The only difference is that from next year more songs are qualified for the TV shows. The jurors from the broadcaster will have a little less influence than usual, cause now they’re not deciding which 24 but 40 songs will go to the live shows.
Good. Now they can stop passing over I Wear* Experiment.
While the quality has gone up more, the studio to live performance for many songs (specifically from smaller countries, like the Baltics and Malta) has not been good. Hopefully this allows a more variety of songs and singers to be performed, but I also feel like we could have a situation where some really good songs get left in the quarter finals, purely just due to being in a quarter final with really good songs, and really bad songs get through.
pls… don’t they get like 130 submissions per year ?
Sounds promising to be honest. Eesti Laul 2021 war really well produced and gave us some (even unexpected) good songs. I do like to believe that this enthusiasm is not only coming from the former edition but partly from the success Maneskin has since their victory. A lot of artists do recognize Eurovision now on another basis. I wonder which impact this will have on our next Eurovision season, but I think it will be great!
EL is usually a quality NF, so 40 songs could be fun, and give more time for those 10-15 standouts to marinate. The only potential issue I have is (as per usual) an overload of songs in December-March, so not enough time to follow all the finals. I am hopeful that Estonia will release their songs in the first half of December once again, because if so, I’d be able to really re-listen to them before the rest of the season kicks-in. I’d *love* to watch all EL, MGP, and Melfest heats live, but it will become implausible, I’m afraid.… Read more »
ugh… do we and the people of Estonia really need this?
lately, Eesti Laul has found it difficult to even find 10 good songs, so why increase the number of participants?
well, at least I hope that this format won’t have a negative impact on the result (as it did in Lithuania back in 2017).
also Kerli, Liis, Jüri, Heleza, Gram-of-fun and Elina pls come back!
There are more info available. 1st QF is 20th November. One every week (27th, 4th etc etc).
Semis will be in 3rd and 5th February and the GF 12th!
20 songs in Estonian and 20 in English
Submissions till 20th October.
ig we’ll get to know artists and songs around 10th November.
omg that’s quick!
They could’ve done 4 semifinals, instead of quarterfinals.
Estonia needs to stop riding mediocrity as they have the last couple years. The only reason they didn’t qualify this year is performing second, but countries like latvia finland etc helped them make the final in 2019 2018 2013 when they did not deserve to
2018??? When they came 8th??? I didn’t know Estonia’s 4 neighbors could singlehandedly do that…
give that to a country like ireland or the uk and it wouldnt even make the left hand side lol. it was just costume hype. there literally wasnt a song
did u forget that estonia was 1st in the betting odds before the staging for la forza was even revealed? dumb@ss
Australia came 9th with a song in the same genre the very next year???
i love how you casually skip over the other 2 entries i mentioned because you know theyre trash and wouldnt have made the finals if it wasnt an ex soviet country
In 2019 Estonia was literally FOURTH out of 10 in its semi and got 20 points from ISRAEL , 19 points from BELGIUM and 18 points from PORTUGAL. Just in case your brain cells are still switched off those AREN’T ex-Soviet countries.
I originally skipped over commenting on 2013 and 2019 because the level of stupidity was just too high for you to be out here slandering La Forza as if it didn’t come top 10
Who would’ve helped Estonia in 2013 then? Estonia was in the first semifinal with Latvia and Finland being in the 2nd. Estonia didn’t qualify this year but those two countries were in the same semifinal regardless.
Also, La Forza is still my winner of 2018 and deserved at least a top 5 spot.
Storm came third in 2019 seni final televote and Finland was our only neighbor then.
I don’t get your point because many songs in the semi final have a boost from neighbors, like Serbia 2019 qualifying only thanks to the Balkan support or Albania 2019 qualifying only thanks to diaspora support.
imagine thinking estonia didn’t deserve the final in 2018… clown behaviour
I don’t think the aim here is to have better song submissions as recently (especially this year) the artistic level has been pretty high and the studio cuts have been very strong. The main problem is live performances. A lot of the fan favourites with excellent studio cuts but sub-par vocals and staging (Usually young rookie artists like Heleza) may benefit from an additional heat to take on improvements and grow in confidence as Lithuanian artists did, often revamping (with varying success) from the heats to the semis. Eesti Laul has a higher level of quality than Lithuania did so… Read more »
Instead of increasing the number of songs, get rid of that superfinal thing
the superfinal will never go because of money
This number of songs could both help and hurt… Just hope it helps…
Holy crap, 40 songs?! When did Estonia start taking cues from Lithuania to expand their national final to be this big? This seems a little excessive to me, and I worry that it could lead to a bunch of terrible songs clogging up the competition to get to the few competitive gems for Eurovision. On one hand, having a seven week show would shorten the amount of time between the December song releases and the start of the national final in February, but if Estonia is going to choose 40 songs for their 2022 NF, they better be worth it.
We already had it this year with Tartu, not gonna lie
Tbh 40 songs seem too complicated for a national selection (old Lithuania looking at you) but if the quality is high why not… More songs the better.
I just hope it won’t be quantity over quality!
That’s my concern too. A large number songs can risk containing more bad than good for a selection. I hope this doesn’t hurt Estonia next year.