A few months back, the French delegation was confident to make their big reveal of the season: France 2 will kick off its first national selection system since 2014. The broadcaster is now ready to reveal more details of the jury, how the eventual winner will be chosen and the number of acts that will compete in each of the shows.
A brand new national selection format will see the light in early 2018, “Destination Eurovision” will be used to pick France’s very own representative for Lisbon. Some details have been announced through a live press conference which has taken place a few minutes ago in the broadcaster’s headquarters. As revealed before, it will be French TV personality and singer Garou who will introduce the shows to the French audience.
Eighteen candidates:
A total of 18 acts will take part in the competition and all of them will be accurately selected by the combination of the thoughts of an international jury and a national panel.
It has also been presented who will be having their say as part of the national jury panel in the shows: 2016 representative Amir,  French singer Cristophe Willem and Canadian performer Isabelle Boulay.
https://twitter.com/EurovisionF2/status/940149431361527808
The international jury members will be Christer Björkman (Swedish HoD) Nicola Caligliore (Italian HoD) and Olga Salamakha (Belarusian HoD). All three Heads of Delegation are no strangers when it comes to taking part in this kind of decisions around several national selections in Europe.
France 2 revealed that among all 1500 collected applications, well-known names in the industry sent in tracks for the competition, such as Zazie or Maître Gaims.
Three shows:
Three shows are set to be aired to select the French entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018, two semi-finals and a grand final. The semi-final qualifiers will be determined via a 100% jury vote comprised by both the international and national panels mentioned above. The overall winner will be selected by a 50/50 combination of votes from ten international judges and audience vote.
The names of the acts making up each of the two semi-finals will be announced just a few days before its respective show. 9 acts will compete in each of the two semifinals, which will see 4 of them qualifying to the final where 8 acts will fight for the ticket to Lisbon.