She already won Albanian X Factor a few years ago, and now Arilena Ara will represent her country at the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam!

The 58th edition of Festivali i Këngës served as the Albanian preselection for ESC 2020, as well as our traditional pre-Christmas warm-up into the new season. Over several nights and in the reliable company of the RTSH orchestra and neverending advert breaks, our chatters in the #esc chat also reconvened for the new year and flexed their voting fingers as usual.

Their favourite was also the overall favourite of the jury, and so the first entry chosen for the first Eurovision Song Contest of the new decade is “Shaj” by Arilena Ara – written by the team behind last year’s North Macedonian outperformer “Proud”, among many other things.

A certain section of online fandom will forever claim that runner-up Elvana Gjata’s “Me tana” was robbed – and indeed, as the full jury results published by broadcaster RTSH show, all three of the foreign jurors had Elvana in first place. The two Albanian jury members chose to vote her down, however, paving the way for Arilena’s victory.

See what you think of the Albanian choice below – the crowd in the hall certainly seemed to enjoy it!