Hosting cities of Melodifestivalen 2015 announced – minor competition format changes implemented

Today the swedish broadcaster SVT revealed the hosting cities of the swedish national selection Melodifestivalen 2015. The final will be held at Friends Arena for the third consecutive year and new hosting cities are Östersund and Helsingborg. News for next year is also that there will be less songs in the heats but 12 in the final.

The complete schedule for the swedish national selection to Eurovision, Melodifestivalen 2015:

 Date  Heat  City  Arena
 February 7  Heat 1  Göteborg  Scandinavium
 February 14  Heat 2  Malmö  Malmö Arena
 February 21  Heat 3  Östersund  Östersund Arena
 February 28  Heat 4  Örebro  Conventum
 March 7  Second chance  Helsingborg  Helsingborg Arena
 March 14  Final  Stockholm  Friends Arena

Stockholm has hosted the final all the way back to 2002 while Göteborg and Malmö have both been hosts of Melodifestivalen heats several times. Örebro was a host for the Second chance heat in 2010 while Österund and Helsingborg will host the their first heats in the history of the competition.

SVT has also revealed some minor changes to the selection in 2015:
There will now be 28 instad of 32 songs in the heats and the final will now have 12 instead of 10 songs. This means that there will, just like in the previous years, 2 direct qualifiers to the final from each heat while the third and fourth placed songs will get a another chance to qualify in the second chance heat.
A change to next years second chance is that there will be only four duels where the winners of each duel will get a place in the final.

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Source: SVT, EuroVisionary
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