Eurovision Slovenia: 16 National Finalists Revealed for 2018!

Slovenia haven’t always had the best results at Eurovision, but that doesn’t stop them from trying each year to improve on their results. As we reported earlier this week, the nation were to reveal the acts that would be participating in their national final EMA, and now we know the 16 acts, some of which are familiar faces!

Slovenian broadcaster RTVSLO had said that a total of 108 entries were received, which is an increase on 2017 and 2016. All the entries that are taking part in the national final are in national language, which was due to a change in rules that saw the acts only being allowed to compete in Slovene or other minority languages of the country. We’re still not sure whether this will carry on to Eurovision, or whether they will revamp the song.

Here are the 16 competing entries:

• Anabel – Pozitiva

• BQL – Ptica

• Gregor Ravnik – Zdaj je čas

• INA SHAI – “V nebo”

• Indigo – “Vesna”

• KiNG FOO – “Žive sanje”

• Lara Kadis – “Zdaj sem tu”

• Lea Sirk – “Cirque”

• ManuElla – “Dan potem”

• Marina Martensson – “Blizu”

• MILA – “Svoboda”

• Nika Zorjan – “Uspavanka”

• Nuška Drašček – “Ne zapusti me zdaj”

• ORTER – “Tisoč let”

• Proper – “Ukraden cvet”

• Tanja Ribič – “Ljudje”

From the line-up we can see that former Eurovision participants ManuElla and Tanja Ribič are returning, with the former having performed in 2016 with her song Blue and Red, and the latter having performed back in 1997 with Zbudi se. There’s also a few names we’ve seen in EMA before, including BQL, KiNG FOO, Nika Zorjan and Nuška Drašček.

This year’s selection will feature a semi-final where all the acts will perform to have only 8 qualify to the national final. The eight acts will be selection by both a jury and the public vote. The jury vote has undergone a change, where before there were six regional juries, and now the juries will be composed of representatives from the radio and television industries as well as singers, composers, OGAE Slovenia and jury representatives from outside of Slovenia.