It’s that time of year again: We’re launching our search for the most ROBBED song of the 2025 Eurovision national final season!
SongHunt 2025 is just around the corner, and while the broad concept is the same as usual, there are a few changes – so allow us to tell you all about how things are going to work this year.
Four exciting events in the chat
Firstly, the process is a little more streamlined this year. The competition for the twelve places in the grand final will be more fierce than ever! After just three semi-finals (instead of four), the successful entries will be all reunited in the final – without any Last Chance round like in previous years.
New system for the semi-final lineup
The way we fill those semi-finals is also changing, the goal being to cater for more variety and higher quality. For those of you who are into all the details, we’ve added a little explanation further below.
We’ve also expanded our wildcard concept (for songs that didn’t make it all the way to their national final) with regular Second Chance polls that we’re promoting in the chat and on our Facebook community group. If you’re a chat regular, make sure you join us there!
Every semi-final has its own cut-off date as previously. In most cases, that is the Saturday before the poll launch for each semi-final. The line-up for the next semi-final is decided by the end of that cut-off date.
Six automatic qualifiers
Half of the songs get into a semi-final based on previous success factors:
- The current top three from the main qualification list (based on the national final chat score)
- The next two songs from the main qualification list from two different countries that aren’t already represented in the aforementioned top three
- The current top scorer from the Second Chance list (based on the weekly Second Chance voting rounds)
Six selected entries
The other half of the songs will be carefully selected:
- Three songs will be chosen by each member of the SongHunt team, and may come from either list (the main qualification list and/or the Second Chance list). We will take the preferences of our chatters into account, but this also helps us to enable more variety, as well as giving polarizing entries a better chance of being included in SongHunt
Results as part of the semi-final events
We also wanted to make the semi-final events in the chat more exciting, so we thought: Why not swap things around and run the public poll (which makes up 50% of the result) in the week leading up to the respective chat event? That way, when we vote in the chat, we can immediately calculate the final result and present the four qualifiers as the climax to the show. More drama, more fun!
Benvenuti, Sanremo!
And perhaps the most notable change of all: For the first time ever, Sanremo songs are eligible for SongHunt! This has been the topic of debate among our chat community for many years, and there were good arguments for both treating and not treating Sanremo entries as regular national finalists. Unlike in the early years following Italy’s return to the contest, however, it does now seem like the pathway “Sanremo winning song” -> “Italian ESC entry” has established itself as something we can rely on – so we’re willing to treat the non-winning Sanremo entries as defeated national finalists and include them in our SongHunt master list. Benvenuti!
Don’t be too worried by all of these changes, however. The SongHunt fundamentals – voting in the public poll on each semi-final, and voting in the chat as part of the live result – remain as familiar as ever. And your participation and support will be appreciated as it has been for the last decade of SongHunt.
Here’s an overview of the dates for your diary. We look forward to seeing lots of you in the #esc chat for the live shows!
Chat event dates:
23 February – Semi-final 1
(2 March – No SongHunt because the Croatian final is that night!)
9 March – Semi-final 2
16 March – Semi-final 3
30 March – Final
0 Comments