Ukraine will be represented at the Eurovision Song Contest 2025, which will be held in Basel, Switzerland. The Ukrainian participating broadcaster Suspilne will organise the national final Vidbir2025 in order to select its entry for the contest.
Prior to the 2025 contest, the National Television Company of Ukraine (NTU) until 2016, and the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (UA:PBC/Suspilne) since 2017 had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 19 times since its first entry in 2003.[1] It had won the contest on three occasions: in 2004 with the song "Wild Dances" performed by Ruslana, in 2016 with the song "1944" performed by Jamala, and in 2022 with the song "Stefania" performed by Kalush Orchestra. They had been the runner-up in the contest on two occasions: in 2007 with the song "Dancing Lasha Tumbai" performed by Verka Serduchka and in 2008 with the song "Shady Lady" performed by Ani Lorak. Following the introduction of semi-finals in 2004, Ukraine had managed to qualify to final in every contest they participated in thus far. Its least successful result had been 24th place, which they achieved in 2017 with the song "Time" performed by O.Torvald.
As part of its duties as participating broadcaster, Suspilne organises the selection of its entry in the Eurovision Song Contest and broadcasts the event in the country. Suspilne confirmed their intentions to participate at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest on 10 September 2024.[2] In the past, the broadcaster had alternated between both internal selections and national finals in order to select its entry. Between 2022 and 2024, Suspilne had set up national finals with several artists to choose both the song and performer to compete at Eurovision, with both the public and a panel of jury members involved in the selection. The method was continued to select the 2025 Ukrainian entry.[3]
Vidbir 2025 will be the ninth edition of Vidbir which will select the Ukrainian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025. The competition will consist of a final 8 February 2025 and will take place in Kyiv.[4][5]
Format
The selection of the competing entries for the national final and ultimately the Ukrainian Eurovision entry will take place over three stages. In the first stage, artists and songwriters had the opportunity to apply for the competition either through an online submission form. Twenty acts were longlisted and announced on 11 December 2024.[6] The second stage will involve the longlisted artists attending a scheduled audition. Up to nine acts will be selected, while an additional act will be selected from an online selection.[7] The third stage will be the televised final, which will take place in February 2025 and featured the acts vying to represent Ukraine in Basel. The winner will be selected via the combination of votes from a public vote and an expert jury, the latter of which its members will be selected by the public.[8]
Competing entries
Artists and composers had the opportunity to submit their entries via an online submission form which accepted entries between 17 September 2024 and 10 November 2024. Only artists that had not performed in events organized by/located in the territory of "the aggressor state" or illegally entered the territory of Crimea since 15 March 2014 were allowed to apply for the competition, and songs performed in the "language of the aggressor state" were prohibited.[8][9]2006 Ukrainian Eurovision entrantTina Karol was assigned as the new music producer of the competition and was the lead in reviewing the 374 received submissions. 20 entries were longlisted, of which their artists were announced on 11 December 2024.[6][10] Auditions were held in late December 2024 where nine entries were shortlisted to compete in the national final. On 20 December 2024, the nine selected competing acts were announced.[11] A public online vote among the non-qualifying entries of the auditions will be held by 17 January 2025 to determine an additional competing act.[12]
For the jury member selection, ten candidates were presented to the public which was able to vote via the Diia mobile application between 16 and 23 December 2024.[14] A total of 442,374 votes were cast, with Jamala, Serhiy Tanchynets [uk] and Kateryna Pavlenko emerging as top-three and becoming the jurors.[15]
