🇫🇮 Finland: Six Juries Will Select the Songs Competing in UMK 2026

Yle has announced that six juries will be involved in selecting the acts that will compete in UMK 2026, the Finnish selection for the Eurovision Song Contest.

A mix of professional and public juries will be used to select the acts and songs that will compete in UMK 2026. The professional jury will be chaired by YleX’s music manager Tapio Hakanen and will be formed of music professionals. This jury will then be joined by five public juries that are formed of a diverse group of people. Between these six juries they will select the songs competing to represent Finland at Eurovision 2026.

Tapio Hakanen commented:

UMK’s influence in creating Finnish music phenomena has grown stronger year by year. The successes of the previous season included Erika Vikman’s “Ich Komme” with over 30 million streams, Nelli Matula’s biggest radio song of the year “Hitaammin hautaan”, and Goldielocks’ breakthrough and great success with the English-language song “Made Of”. UMK has no genre restrictions and we hope to have the most diverse song coverage possible for our professional and audience juries to judge.

The submission window for Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK) 2026 opened on Monday and will close on August 24. Some of the rules of the Finnish selection include:

• Songs must not have been publicly released in any form.
• Solo artists must be Finnish citizens or have permanent residence in Finland. For groups, at least one member must be a Finnish citizen or have permanent residence in Finland.
• Soloists or lead singers of bands may submit up to three songs but only one is eligible to be chosen for the final. Other band members, songwriters and composers may submit and compete with as many songs as they like.
• Songs must not exceed three minutes.
• If a song is selected for the final, the final version of the song must be submitted to Yle by October 31.

The full rules of UMK 2026 can be found here in Finnish, Swedish and English.

UMK 2026 will take place on February 28 in Nokia Arena in Tampere. The winner will represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Austria.

Erika Vikman represented Finland at the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 with “Ich komme”. Finland finished 11th in the final scoring 196 points. Finland received 12 points from the Austrian jury and received 10 points from the public in Sweden, Australia and Estonia.

Image source: Alma Bengtsson / EBU | Source: Yle

Finland first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1961. They debuted alongside Spain and Yugoslavia. Finland has finished last in the contest on 10 occasions and has received ‘nul points’ three times. It wasn’t until 2006 that Finland won the Eurovision Song Contest. Lordi represented the country in Athens with the song “Hard Rock Hallelujah” scoring 292 points, a record total at the time.

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