Serbia Selects: It’s Sanja Ilić and Balkanika!

This year Serbia returned to the Beovizijia format of national selection, and from a total of 75 entrants, the list of competitors was shortened down to a total of 17. At the Sava Centre in the nation’s capital, Belgrade, these 17 participants performed their competing entries all hoping to become the next Serbian Eurovision representative!

Here is the list of competitors:

• SevdahBABY – Hajde da igramo sada

• Rambo Amadeus and Beti Đorđević – Nema te

• Maja Nikolić – Zemlja čuda

• Srđan & Emil – Bar da znam

• Ivan Kurtić – Ni sunca, ni meseca

• Sanja Ilić and Balkanika – Nova deca

• Koktel Balkan – Zato

• Boris Režak –Vila

• Lana and Aldo – Jača sam od svih

• Dušan Svilar – Pod krošnjom bagrema

• Igor Lazarević – Beži od mene

• Saška Janković – Pesma za tebe

• Lord – Samo nek se okreće

• Danijel Pavlović – Ruža sudbine

• BASS – Umoran

• Osmi Vazduh and Friends – Probudi se

• Biber and DJ Niko Bravo – Jutros (Svatovi)

The winner of the competition was decided by both televoting and a jury, so let’s go through the voting! We’ll start with the jury votes, which were topped by Sanja Ilić and Balkanika with their entry Nova Deca. Coming in second with the jury was Saška Janković with Pesma za tebe, and in third was Ivan Kurtić.

In the televoting, the most votes went to Sanja Ilić and Balkanika, with over 14,000 votes, which equated to 12 points. In second with the public was also Saška Janković, and in third was Dušan Svilar with the song Pod krošnjom bagrema.

As such, with the points combined, it was unsurprisingly Sanja Ilić and Balkanika who took the top spot, and will go on to represent Serbia at Eurovision this year with the song Nova Deca. Coming in second was Saška Janković, and in third was Dušan Svilar.

About the artist:

Sanja Ilić and Balkanika have been growing in popularity in Serbia recently, with the aim of revitalising and modernising the Serbian music traditions. The lead composer of the group Aleksandar Sanja Ilić ensures that the group’s musicians play traditional Balkan instruments, whilst are able to blend their sound into a modern pop-rock genre.

Listen to the song down below: