Last night, Armenia’s national selection show to find a representative for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest (Depi Evratesil 2018) came to a conclusion. Sevak Khanagyan won the contest with the song “Qami” which translates as wind in English and he will, therefore, be heading off to Lisbon in May.
The national selection show was organised by the Public Television company of Armenia (AMPTV). Twenty acts competed across two semi-finals before the top ten went through to perform in last nights final. Sevak was one of the favourites throughout the show and his performance on the night saw him win both the jury and public vote.
“Qami” was written by Sevak alongside Anna Danielyan and Viktorya Maloyan, and the song will make Eurovision history as it will be the first song at Eurovision to be sung entirely in Armenian. Armenia will perform in the second semi-final in May.
You can watch Sevak Khanagyan perform “Qami” below:
Armenia made its debut at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 but have yet to finish in the top three. They have, however, came very close, finishing in fourth place on two occasions, firstly with Sirusho in 2008 and with Aram Mp3 in 2014.
Armenia will be hoping they can finally break into that top three and even win the competition 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, Gianna Terzi for Greece, Alekseev for Belarus, Vanja Radovanovic for Montenegro, Sanja Ilic and Balkanika for Serbia, Michael Schulte for Germany, DoReDos for Moldova, AWS for Hungary, Mélovin for Ukraine, Laura Rizzotto for Latvia, Lea Sirk for Slovenia and The Humans for Romania.
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.