Right after the cancellation of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, SVT made clear that The Mamas will not represent Sweden in Eurovision 2021. For Sweden, Melodifestivalen is just as big as Eurovision, if not bigger, so the broadcaster didn’t want to cancel Melodifestivalen 2021.
SVT announced that composers and song writers who want to participate in next year’s Melodifestivalen must submit their songs from 24th August until 16th September.
- At least one composer must be a Swedish citizen.
- SVT will try to have 10 out of 28 songs in the Swedish language.
- 14 songs from the open submission will be chosen by a jury and 14 songs will be selected internally by artists and song writers that were invited by SVT.
- SVT wants 50% of the selected songs to have female composers/lyricists. In addition, SVT wants to implement a rule for Melodifestivalen 2022 that will require at least one female composer/lyricist in all the songs written by more than one person.
The full rules of Melodifestivalen can be found HERE (in Swedish).
As usual, the competing acts will be announced sometime in late November. The first act however, will once again be revealed already in 12th September as this is the date that P4 Nästa‘s final will take place. P4 Nästa is a regional radio contest and since 2016, the winner gets a wildcard for Melodifestivalen.