Kamil Mikulcík & Nela Pocisková

Slovakia announces participants for national final, including some known names

Slovakia has announced details of its preparations for Oslo.

After Tuesday’s semifinal, this evening, we discovered who would fill the remaining places in the final on Saturday. Nineteen countries, including favourites Norway, competed for the ten available places. The hosts were Andrey Malakhov and Natalia Vodianova, who also hosted the first semifinal.

Today saw the start of the second round of rehearsals. Thirteen countries from the first semifinal rehearsed again, and also gave press conferences.

Last week, we at Eurovisionary gave our predictions for the first semifinal. Now we turn our attention to the second semifinal.

Having previously announced that the public televote will be combined by a jury vote, the EBU have now announced details of how this new system will work.

Slovakia was finally returning to the Eurovision fold after a gap of some 11 years.  To celebrate this, they arranged a lavish selection process of five semi-finals with a final of 16 songs.

This evening, Slovakian broadcaster, STV, hosted the fifth and last semifinal. Three more songs took the remaining places available. Two songs were chosen by a public phone vote, and one by a jury.