Belarus becomes the latest country to choose their representative for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Alekseev won the countries national selection show Eurofest 2018 with “Forever” and will perform the song in the first semi-final of the contest in Lisbon. The song sounds very current and could translate very well on the Eurovision stage come May.
Ninety-three applications were to submitted Eurofest 2018 before auditions took place. A professional jury then chose the top ten candidates who featured in the finals. Alekseev won the contest after receiving the most points from both the public vote and juries vote.
You can watch the official music video for “Forever” below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGuqBDOjzJY
Belarus first entered the Eurovision Song Contest back in 2004 but have not had much success over the years, only managing to qualify for the final on five occasions since their debut. Their best entry came in 2007 when Dmitry Koldun finished in sixth place with the song “Work Your Magic”. Last year, Naviband represented Belarus with “Story of my Life”, a catchy, upbeat song which saw them finish in sixteenth place in the final.
Belarus will be hoping they can do well in the contest this year, however, they already have some tough competition. Other acts that have been announced so far are Sennek for Belgium, Saara Aalto for Finland, Waylon for the Netherlands, AISEL for Azerbaijan, Cesar Sampson for Austria, Jessica Mauboy for Australia, Eugent Bushpepa for Albania, Iriao for Georgia, Madame Monsieur for France, Julia Samoylova for Russia, Alfred & Amaia for Spain, Mikolas Josef for the Czech Republic, Ryan O’Shaughnessy for Ireland, Eleni Foureira for Cyprus, Christabelle for Malta, Zibbz for Switzerland, SuRie for the United Kingdom, Rasmussen for Denmark, Ermal Meta and Fabrizio Moro for Italy, Eye Cue for F.Y.R Macedonia, Franka for Croatia, Netta Barzilai for Israel and Gianna Terzi for Greece.
The Eurovision Song Contest 2018 will be hosted at the Altice Arena, Lisbon, Portugal; with the two Semi-Finals taking place on 8 May and 10 May and the Grand Final taking place on 12 May. A total of 43 countries will compete in the contest.