It’s the Balkan nation that usually internally selects its act for Eurovision. Now North Macedonia‘s broadcaster MRT has confirmed it will use a new national final Za Evrosong 2022 to select its act for Eurovision 2022.
Broadcaster MRT confirmed the new national final and opened the entry period for the competition. Entries are now open and the broadcaster is looking for submissions from songwriter-singer teams. All performers must be citizens of North Macedonia, however songwriters may come from abroad.
From the entries, MRT will shortlist a number of acts — no more than six — who will compete in the new national final. The winner will be decided by a 50% audience vote and 50% international jury vote.
The winner will receive a prize of €2000 which is intended to be used for final post-production and mastering of the song ahead of Eurovision.
The contest’s name appears to be Za Evrosong 2022 (or “For Eurovision 2022”). Entries for the new national final close on 16 January 2022.
North Macedonia’s Eurovision selection history
North Macedonia debuted at Eurovision in 1996 and until 2012 it regularly used a national final to select its Eurovision act. The long-running song contest Skopje Fest was used as the national final in this era, but from 2005 to 2006 this was replaced with the national final Nacionalen Evrosong.
In 2012, MRT dropped its national final format and simply internally select its Eurovision act. In 2015 Daniel Kajmakoski was selected via Skopje Fest, however the broadcaster returned to internal selection the following year.
North Macedonia’s internal selection era has not delivered the country especially good results. Since 2012, only once has an artist from North Macedonia made it to the Eurovision grand final. This was in 2019 when Tamara Todevska gave her country its best ever Eurovision result when “Proud” finished seventh in the grand final.
Most recently the internally selected act Vasil placed second to last in his semi-final in Rotterdam.
What do you think? Will a new national final work for North Macedonia? Who would you like to see enter? Tell us your thoughts below!
My prediction is coming true. I had predicted that Tamara’s qualification and top-10 placement would be an one-time event.
It’s obvious MRT doesn’t have a clue on how to participate decently in ESC.
I just hope we won’t wait 7 years again to see a decent entry from them. They deserve better.
Such an amateur move by my country or more precisely MRT. Everybody thought they’ve already chosen the artist. And now this, in such a short period of time. I’m almost certain it’s a non qualification for us again
Not another Melfest reject celebration…
Well ‘In a moment like this’ was also a melfest rejection if i remember correctly, but it finished 4th, and the Melfest winner didn’t even qualify for the final. How do you know the average quality of the Melfest rejected songs? You don’t. Stop overrating a bunch of jury professionals who select the songs only because it’s Sweden and is popular among esc fans
Higher ground was another melfest reject that was actually popular, which was Also represented by Denmark in 2018. Sometimes melfest looks bad for rejecting such good songs
Nobody talking about the quality, it’s the whole point of Eurovision. Why bother making a song competition if all of the songs are from Sweden?
The only reason North Macedonia is hosting a national final is because of the controversy with Vasil last year. Many Macedonian’s took to Facebook and complained about his song, and then the ‘Bulgarian’ controversy made it worse. Vasil not qualifying for the final was the icing on the cake.
I guess MRT don’t want to deal with the drama anymore and will let Macedonian’s decide for themselves. A very bold move, I hope it pays off.
Also, only 1 month to submit songs is way too short. I hope this last-minute plan doesn’t backfire.
I wish they made this announcement like in October or November so that there be enough time For artist to prepare for their submissions, but will have to see. It could be another non-qualification for north Macedonia, but at least the people have a say in their selection.
They should have mentioned they were planning a national final months beforehand. The open call for entries should have been a month or maybe even two months ago. It’s frustrating how lighthearted they are about this. Totally unprofessional
They don’t wanna deal with anything. It’s simple. We are the ones who pay, they are the ones who don’t bring results, but are trying every year without a strategy thinking maybe we’ll get lucky somehow. They just don’t care.
I want Viktorija Loba or Dani Dimitrovska
Don’t know about you, but North Macedonia has a plethora of young musicians. So if I have to have my picks for Za Evrosong 2022, I’d like to see Martija Stanojkovic, Mina Blazhev, Marija Spasovska, or Mila Moskov.
notchu talking about “a plethora of young musicians” and then listing four jesc singers lmaooo
Probably the only Macedonian singers they know of. I didn’t realize they were junior Eurovision alumni. I wondered why the last name sounded familiar.
HAHAHAH
Macedonia have a plethora of great JESC songs and performers though. Any of them doing the Destiny/Stefania route would probably get North Macedonia one of their best results (if not the best) if they could get the same songwriters, not least because some ESC fans will already be fans.
I would like Lozano to come back to the competition, but I think it’s not very realistic or that Lara would submit her piece for elimination in Macedonian
hmm… not sure if I like this… but it may be good, we’ll see.
As I said before, I’m surprised that North Macedonia is doing a national final because I would presume they would’ve done another internal selection, but the more the merrier I guess. But I do worry that with this being announced so late and with the deadline in the January, That’s going to be a rushed production, although it’s not as rushed as Russia for 2021 when it announced a national final literally the same day it airs. Six songs might be all they could do within a short period time, but we’ll see.
Kali, Lozano or Lara!
Lozano or Antonia Gigovska !
Color me surprised. I did not see this coming. I never expected north Macedonia to do a national final for the first time in years. In fact, I had never experienced a north Macedonian national final because I got onto your visit in 2016, which is when they start to do a run of internal selections. I don’t know who’s been keeping track of how many countries doing national finals or internal selections, but north Macedonia makes it to 26 country doing a national final, which is a Reversal of having 26 internal selections for 2021 (although to be fair,… Read more »