With SWR taking up the mantle of German Eurovision participation, the outline of Germany’s National Final plans have been set out, with RTL and Chefsache’s involvement as expected not being carried forward.

Chefsache and RTL out

Germany fansite ESCKompakt is reporting that SWR, the member of ARD now in charge of Germany’s Eurovision participation, has laid out its plans for next year’s national final. As expected they will be holding an open submission window that will remain open until the 22nd of October. As well as the standard Eurovision rules one would expect from a national final, SWR are seeking someone with established presence in the music industry. So no newcomers. It is report that the final will be a single round contest taking in February next year. At present no date has been announced for the show.

The history of German NFs

Over the years, Germany has used a combination of national finals and internal selections to choose their Eurovision representatives. In recent years, they have used “Unser lied fur (host city)” (translation – A song for (host city)). However, in 2024, they rebranded the national final to “Eurovision Song Contest – Das Deutsche Finale” (translation – ESC – The German final). Nine artists participated, one of which was chosen through the feeder show “Ich will zum ESC!” (translation – I want to go to ESC). The show used a 50%-50% split of jury and televote to decide the final results. Each international jury gave 1-6, 8, 10 and 12 points, then the German public vote made up the other 50% of the results.

Germany Eurovision Journey

Germany has been part of Eurovision since the beginning, debuting in 1956. Their debut entries were Walter Andreas Schwarz’s “Im Wartesaal zum großen Glück” and Freddy Quinn’s “So geht das jede Nacht”. Germany has appeared at every Eurovision except for 1996, which means they have been at more Contests than any other country. They have a long history of success in Eurovision, finishing in the top 3 an impressive 13 times. Germany has won the contest twice: Nicole won in 1982 with her song “Ein bißchen Frieden”, taking home 161 points. Their second win came in 2010, when Lena scored 246 points with her song “Satellite”.

Germany’s most recent Eurovision entry was Abor & Tynna with “Baller”. As Germany is part of the Big 5, they automatically qualified for the Grand Final. In the Final, the song received 151 points and finished in 15th place.

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Source: ESCKompact

Photo credit: Corinne Cumming/EBU

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