For Sweden’s Melodifestivalen, 2022 is a year of change. Melfest project manager Anette Brattström has confirmed the changes to the Melodifestivalen voting system. Viewers will now have two opportunities to vote in the heats and the grand final. As well, full voting totals will now be revealed as the results are revealed in each heat.
The new voting system is designed to get viewers more involved in the shows. Anette Brattström told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, “When we see how the viewers vote, they are very involved in the first half of the program. But then all the heartbeat voting is over, so during the rest of the program you can not get involved and influence anymore. Therefore, we will now hand out new heart votes for round two.”
The Melodifestivalen heats will now reveal the voting totals, so the competing acts will know which among them were least popular with the public. When asked if artists might find it uncomfortable to learn who finished last, Brattstrorm said, “No, I actually do not think so. Because what we do is show how much support the artists still received. It has been received positively in previous years, when we have reported that even those who have finished fifth, sixth or seventh received a lot of votes and aroused a great deal of commitment.”
Melodifestivalen 2022 – new voting changes for the heats
During the performances of the Melodifestivalen heats, app users will be able to vote for their favourite performances. They will have five votes per song. After the seven performances, the first qualifier will be announced based on who received the most votes in that first round.
The six remaining acts will then face another round of voting, added to the voting totals from the first round. Viewers will receive another five votes.
Voting from the second round will also be weighted in the age group categories, representing viewers aged 3–9 years, 10–15 years, 16–29 years, 30–44 years, 45–59 years, 60–74 years, 75 and over, as well as those who still vote by phone.
Suspense will be ramped up as the age group votes are revealed. Similar to the Eurovision jury voting presentation, the 12 points from each age group will be presented verbally, while the rest of each age group’s points will be shown on screen.
The new system also means that total scores will be known on the night. In the past, semi-final voting totals have only been revealed to the media days after the grand final.
There will also be no encore performances on the two acts that qualify for the grand final.
The new Melodifestivalen semi-finals replace the andra chansen round
Formerly known as the andra chasen round, the new Melodifestivalen second-chance round is now being called the semi-finals. The third- and fourth-placed acts from each heat will compete for places in the grand final.
The andra chansen duels have been scrapped. Instead the third- and fourth-placed acts from the heats will be divided into two groups, known as semi-final one and semi-final two.
Two acts will qualify from each semi-final. The acts will face just one round of voting, based on the app voting in age categories along with the televote. For time reasons, the voting totals will not be be details in the semi-finals.
Changes to the Melodifestivalen grand final voting
Changes are also coming to the grand final vote. Viewers will again have two rounds of voting. During the performances of the 12 competing finalists, viewers will have five votes per participant. After the international jury reveal how they have votes, viewers will have another five votes per act to use.
The viewer votes will then be revealed split into each age category.
The first heat will be held in Stockholm’s Avicii Arena
While the Melodifestivalen tour won’t be going ahead due to Covid concerns, a new home has been found for the first heat. The contest on 5 February will be held in Stockhom’s Avicii Arena.
This is the hemisphere-shaped venue formerly named Stockholm Globe Arena — familiar to Eurovision fans as the location of Eurovision 2016. Last year the venue was renamed Avicii Arena in honour of the famed Swedish music producer Tim “Avicii” Bergling.
The grand final of Melodifestivalen 2022 will still be held in the traditional location of Friends Arena. Locations for the four other Melfest 2022 shows have not been confirmed yet.
What do you think of the new Melodifestivalen voting system? Will the contest be more exciting to watch? Tell us your thoughts below!
I think double voting during heats could be interesting but the second turn of voting after the jury votes are revealed leaves me a bit perplexed
Everyone hates sweden and melodifestivalen so much. Please remeber, melodifestivalen is way more than just a national final. It is a historical, cultural swedish tv-show.
Completely correct. I’ve met swedes who like Mello but barely know what eurovision is. No one knows it like “our selection show”. It’s clearly its own thing
True. And as a preschool teacher I can assure you there will be a quota of the songs popular there as well. Samir & Viktor, Sean Banan and similar are still asked for by children who were not born when they participated
Let them do whatever they want to do. They will try it this year and if it works it will be used again next year. If it doesn’t work, they will adjust it. The only thing that worries me – if the producers like it, they will probably try to change it at eurovision too, because it makes “better television”.
So they destroy the voting like Norway? And Globen is now called Avicii Arena?
But Avicii was really good and good. I dont mind it.
The name change of the arena was to pay an homage to Avicii but also to connect it to the organization his parents started to raise awareness of mental health issues that young people go through (much like Friends arena where the arena is named after Friends which is an anti bullying organization). But sure in the beginning many Swedes thought that they could’ve renamed Tele2-arena instead that is just next to “The Globe”-arena but as you said, people don’t really mind anymore.
He was great, greater than you will ever be, even long after you are dead. You will be forgotten he will not. He was a legend and will always be!
Absolutely disrespectful and DISGUSTING comment! Vile troll
Lol I don’t get why people from other countires are pissed. It’s Sweden’s national selection and if the Swedes are okay with it, who are you to talk trash about them?
Does that now sound like a way to gain more money? making people feel like they need to vote twice?
Except app voting is completely free… you can still vote by phone, but it’s far from the only option.
I might be in a minority but I like the change and the 2nd round.
Public will vote after hearing all songs which is always good. and less known names may have a better chance as some people only vote for the name in the 1st round while the performance is on.
We need to see how it’s gonna work anyway
Thats a lot of negativity on this site, how about some positivity?
The system wont work for others but works for Sweden and thats that. Every country does what works best for them..
There’s always a subset of fans that just want to talk trash about Sweden no matter what.
I mean, Sweden keeps disappointing year after year.
This year it seems to be more negativity all around, not just Sweden ESC is for me positive thing and I try to stay positive about news, especially after it got cancelled. But some people can’t have it, it seems…
The Avicii disrespect….. yikes
The “local noname disc jockey” managed to make it several times to the Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 with an underperforming genre and many of his songs made it to #1 in most charts around the world.
What’s the point of changing the voting system too often? They’re only complicating it and ruining the results at the end.
No wonder why Melfest comes off as messier year after year.
Can they please just remove the app voting at and only have phone and message voting. It was better songs that went to the final before they introduced app voting
Except for the fact that people watched the show without voting. SVT is our public broadcaster. They want the different age groups to participate
You can change your voting system as much as you want, Anette. As long as the songs are bland pop imitating chart hits, things are unlikely to change, really.
I rather have “bland pop imitating chart hits” than experimental stuff purely for the sake of being different.
That’s the only thing they’ve sent, and it’s not like they haven’t had great different entries recently
Except 2020
lol do they think 3 yo kids will be voting on their apps?
Trust me, they do…/ a swede
Yes, and that’s a real target audience, Artists like Sean Banan, Dolly style etc. mostly have babies and elememtary schoolers to thank for their success
Preschool techer here. I’ll just confirm the stated
That is why they introduced the age groups so that the children do not take over the entire voting. That may be why Dolly Style did not go to the final or second chance in 2019.
Yes, just ask Hasse Andersson who mostly went through thanks to young votes who had that grand dad aura. And Ewa and Eva was very popular among preschoolers..
I think it’s a nice homage to a world famous Swedish DJ who passed away way too soon. Referring to Avicii as ‘local noname disc jockey’ is factually wrong and pretty disrespectful.
This system sucks. Example: the song that got chosen as the best one by a million viewers gets shown. Now we throw some votes of 30 jury members on it and now we’ll show u who really needs some more votes to win. If you were doing well before in the voting you are now screwed because the 2nd time around people don’t feel the necessity for voting for you since u were doing so well for yourself in the first round. What’s the purpose of doing an extra round of voting except for shaking the whole scoreboard up after… Read more »
An interesting viewpoint. Normally it’s very predictive and all the big names usually end up well in the scoreboard. Maybe this could change this then. For the better I think. Predictive will sometimes make less variation in the finals
Sweden constantly looking for the ultimate perfect voting system, they change it every year but the more they change it, the more they complicate it, not sure if it’s the best way to do. Will you manage to find your perfect formula and don’t change it or complicate it each year, answer the next year. At least they try to innovate we can’t take that credit away from them but sometimes too much is not a good thing.
Every year??? The last time they changed it was 2019
thats two years ago lol
Yes and its not every year
Guys, I felt like commenting this but it’s off-topic: Taking a look at the Finnish singles chart of this week, I saw Ram Pam Pam debuting at #3, being the only UMK entry that’s featured on the list so far. On the other hand, all entries (but Isaac’s) were featured on the Finnish radio airplay chart, with Bess having the highest debut at #24, followed by The Rasmus at #26. The debut position of the remaining contestants are the following: * Younghearted #43 * Olivera #47 * Cyan Kicks #81 * Tommi Läntinen #84 Btw, I assume Kuuma Jäbä’s release… Read more »
It would be something different for Finland if they send Ram Pam Pam. I’d rather a country switch things up than send similar songs two years in a row.
I’d rather the same too, hopefully they do so 🙂
Still don’t understand why they just don’t merge the youngest groups to a 3-15 instead, i mean kids don’t even understand what Mello is until they are like 10 anyways lol
i also don’t understand why there’s a group of people aged 75+ when life expectancy in sweden is just above 80 years… yet there are whole 16-29 and 30-44 categories that are deffo the most crowded
Let the people who suffered the most during the pandemic have their saying! They definitely should have it
You sound like people one hundred years ago who said women cannot understand general elections. Children also like music and if they can they can listen to their favourite melfest act the whole day. Why should they not have a chance to have their saying?
i’m glad about the andra chansen change at least, because sometimes the duels really screwed over some artists who would’ve won against anyone other than the person they got paired with
“It has been received positively in previous years, when we have reported that even those who have finished fifth, sixth or seventh received a lot of votes and aroused a great deal of commitment.”
i mean, if you allow everyone to vote 5 times per performance for a grand total of 35 per night for FREE then the numbers are going to be stratospherical no matter what lmao.
i also don’t think allowing the public to vote AFTER the international jury has already voted, it opens the door for strategies that will make the results less organic.
“The viewer votes will then be revealed split into each age category.” Wrong. Not in the final. They are still revealing the points as before, with each song getting their total score from the viewers at once. After the final the exact votes from the age groups will be released.
The thing is I liked the suspense of not always knowing who won their respective heat because it wasn’t always obvious in some years. But I also guess it’s more transparent and fair. I think the point system is a bit too specific and I kind of wanted them to change that because it looks like some acts haven’t done that well when they receive their points, but the actual votes show they did better on the whole. Wiktoria 2019 is one example: 8th with the televote in terms of points, but 6th in terms of overall votes. Dotter 2021… Read more »
you’re right, when it comes to a public vote, it makes no sense to have it grouped in sections that don’t actually share similar sample numbers. reminds me of austria’s 2004 nf where the voting was divided by regions with a eurovision-style voting, the song that won the overall vote (with 12 points from vienna, which represents 25% of austria’s population but 10% of that vote) ended up 2nd.
Still, at least it’s not as bad as a supposedly Sanmarinese robot having as much power as 80 million Germans.
at eurovision the concept is that each country holds the same weight (i disagree with how the sammarinese “televote” is handled, but still). way different from uneven regions or groups within the same country.
Their robots looked cute on stage.
all i’ve seen are people complaining about this but it actually sounds cool? So many times acts have narrowly missed out on going DTF or even to AC, the second round of voting will mean more concentrated voting as people will probably be rooting for one or two acts who haven’t progressed yet? plus it’s more interesting to mix things up surely?!
I think the age voting is ridick but I certainly welcome the new transparency of revealing the voting totals on the same night. Everyone should follow suit.
The age voting have been involved since 2019
And it is still ridick
This all sounds really messy.
I agree but it probably works in Sweden. So many people are committed to it and they will care enough to find out how it works. You couldn’t do that in Germany, for example. They lost all trust with the viewers, nobody would care.
No, it will be exacting!