Welcome back Portugal! You’ve been missed 🙂

On this year’s edition of Festival da Canção, Portugal will have 16 contenders all wanting to represent them at Eurovision Song Contest 2017.

There will be two semifinals, each with 8 songs. First semifinal will take place on February 19th and the second on the 26th the same month.

From each semifinal only 4 acts will advance in the grand final of Festival da Canção, which will take place on the 5th of March.

RTP – the Portuguese national broadcaster – had an original idea. Instead of announcing the name of the acts and songs, they released the running order only of the composers for each semifinal.

We give you what we have. So further is the running order of the composers in the semifinals.

Semifinal 1 – 19th February
Márcia
Samuel Úria
Nuno Feist
Rita Redshoes
Héber Marques
Pedro Saraiva
Luísa Sobral
Nuno Gonçalves

Semifinal 2 – 26th February
Tóli César Machado
Pedro Silva Martins
Jorge Fernando
João Pedro Coimbra
João Só
Celina da Piedade
Nuno Figueiredo
Noiserv

The winner of Festival da Canção 2017 will be selected by a 50-50 mix of regional judges and public vote.

As this year the rules allow the song to be performed in any language, we’re expecting at least a few entries in English.

Are you looking forward of seeing Portugal again on the main stage of Eurovision? We certainly are!

Author: Bogdan Stefan

Source: RTP, Eurovision Ireland

Picture source: youtube still