Who says exciting things only happen on Super Saturday? It’s been a busy working week in the world of Eurovision as the 2019 contest moves ever closer!

On Monday, the Czech Republic completed its non-televised selection, with a public vote and a jury of recent ESC participants choosing their favourite from eight contenders. The band Lake Malawi, led by singer Albert Černý, finished second in the televote but took overall victory thanks to a good chunk of jury love. Their song “Friend Of A Friend” will duly represent the Czechs in Tel Aviv in May – and for all the final was conducted entirely online, you can get a feel for Lake Malawi as live performers with this “unplugged” version of the song:

In other internal selections, we learned that Austria will seek to maintain its good recent record in the contest with the electropop singer Paenda and “Limits” – though we won’t get to hear the song until much later in the season – while Macedonia, still trading as “FYR Macedonia” for Eurovision purposes despite the recent legislation on their new country name, announced the return of their 2008 representative Tamara Todevska in solo form for the 2019 edition.

Perhaps most excitingly of all, Finland announced that they will be repeating last year’s national final format (one artist, three songs) and that the artist in question will be none other than Darude, responsible for one of the biggest club hits of the early 21st century with “Sandstorm”. All three of the songs in the final on March 2nd are expected to feature Sebastian Rejman on vocals. Some evil genius on the internet almost immediately came up with the perfect mashup to celebrate Darude’s arrival in the pantheon of Finnish entrants – we love it.

The 2019 season continues to gather pace with tonight’s first Estonian semi-final, followed by a whole clutch of shows on Saturday night – including the first heat of Melodifestivalen. Don’t forget you can join us in the #esc chat to watch the shows together and give your votes and thoughts!