The search for Israel’s next entrant of the contest will start on October 31st 2023 in a televised show called “HaKokhav HaBa”, also known as “The Next Star”. The show already started filming when the war broke out in the country, but now has been delayed because of this matter.
Changes due to the war
Several changes in the Next Star format have been made due to the ongoing war. There was no audience in the audition round, so instead of an audience a focus group will count for 40% of the total results.
The Next Star format
The judges of the show are the following: Keren Peles, Shiri Maimon (Israel 2004), Itay Levy, Ran Danker, Eden Hason, and Asaf Amdursky. The hosts of the show are: Assi Azzar and Rotem Sela.
For the 2024 Eurovision season The Next Star format is used again, as it was between 2015 and 2020; during this period Israel qualified each year for the Grand Final, and in 2018 Israel even won the contest with Netta’s song “Toy”.
Eurovision 2023
In the song contest of 2023 in Liverpool (UK) Israel was represented by Noa Kirel, who did really well in both her Semi-final and the Grand Final with the song “Unicorn”. In Semi-final 1 she ended up in 3rd place (of 15), and in the Grand Final she also took the 3rd position (of 26).