Original photo by: © EBU/ Sarah Louise Bennett

Lithuanian broadcaster (LRT) are finally ready to accept applications from interested acts, who wish to participate in the national selection, as well as a chance to represent the country in the upcoming contest, to be held in Austria.

Eurovizija.LT 2026

Applications for the competition will remain open until the 11th November 2025. Hereafter, a number of songs will then be selected to take part in the contest, as long as the submitted songs follow the given rules.

Rules are as usual, which include:

16 years of age, by the time of the competition
Main vocals must be performed live
A maximum of 6 people on stage, for each act
No live animals allowed on stage
Only songs released after September 1st will be allowed
Only citizens or residents of Lithuania can take part

In other words, the usual standard rules. There has been format changes, but we will get to that in a bit.

Within two weeks after the deadline, the commission will have selected at least 30 songs, which will take part in the competition. Meaning that the participants will be announced by November 25th 2025. It’s noteworthy, that the participants will have been selected by then, but not necessarily have their songs revealed. Selected participants will have the ability to submit the final version, before December 23rd 2025.

Format changes

It has also been announced, that the Lithuanian national final “Eurovizija.LT” will see a few changes to their format from previous years.

In total, there will be either 5 or 6 semi-finals held. All semi-finals will be pre-recorded, with the recordings commencing on the 14th of January 2026. In the semi-finals, a jury and the televote will then together decide, which acts qualify to the final, which is already set to take place on the 27th of February 2026 in the country’s capital of Vilnius.

One of the changes this year, is that acts who fail to qualify for the final, by finishing 3rd, will potentially still have a chance to advance to the final. This was also implemented for the national final in 2025, but was not officially part of the rules back then. The reason for this now, is because in 2025, two songs that tied for a qualifying spot were eliminated, despite finishing higher with the televote, giving the juries the tie-breaker.

Speaking about it, this is also a change that is implemented for the 2026 edition, that in case of a tie, the song with more support from the audience, will be favored instead.

Lastly, the final will also be decided by both a jury and the televote, but will not feature a superfinal. The Lithuanian national final finished later than expected in the past, due to problems with the public voting. Hence why public voting will in 2026 be done by SMS and online voting.

In 2025, Lithuania was represented by the punk-rock band Katarsis who performed their song “Tavo Akys” fully in Lithuanian. The Baltic nation impressed Europe once again, and managed to qualify for the final, where they managed to finish at 16th place, after scoring 62 points from the televote and 34 from the juries, for a combined score of 96 points. Every time Lithuania has been represented by a song in Lithuanian, they have always been part of the final.

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Source(s): Announcement AND Rules both on LRT.lt (Both In Lithuanian)