Croatian national broadcaster, HRT, has received no less than 196 song submissions from artists who want to fly their country’s flag during the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in Liverpool, United Kingdom, according to Croatian newspaper “Jutarnji List”. 28 songs will move on to compete in Croatia’s national final, Dora 2023.
Highest number of submissions ever
The 196 submitted songs will be reviewed and will go to the first phase of the Croatian selection for Eurovision 2023. The number of submitted songs is the highest ever in Croatia.
Unknown and known names
The submissions entail singers, but also bands, and other types of music formations, some of them are known, others are unknown names.
The known names that have submitted a song to compete in Dora 2023 are:
- Igor Cukrov: Competed in the contest of 2009, and came in 5th (out of 25) in the Grand Final with the song “Lijepa Tena”.
- Daniel Popović: He competed in the contest of 1983 for what was Yugoslavia back then, and ended in 12th place (out of 20). There were no Semi-finals at the time.
- Damir Kedžo: Damir was supposed to compete in the contest of 2020 in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), but this contest got cancelled because of the pandemic.
The Dora 2023 format
Dora 2023 will have a Semi-final. 28 songs will compete in total, and these songs will be promoted by the Croatian national broadcaster, HRT, in the 5 weeks before the actual final of Dora 2023.
The final of Dora 2023 will take place in February of 2023 in the Croatian city of Opatija.
Croatia in the 2022 contest
In the contest of 2022, in Turin (Italy), Croatia did not do too well, because they narrowly missed out on the Grand Final. Mia Dimšić with her song “Guilty Pleasure” ended in 11th place in the first Semi-final.