Poland, last night, chose their representative for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Gromee featuring Lukas Meijer won the countries national selection show Krajowe Eliminacje 2018 with the high energy, upbeat song “Light Me Up”. Gromee and Lukas will perform “Light Me Up” in the second semi-final in Lisbon.
Krajowe Eliminacje 2018 was organised by the Polish broadcaster TVP who received a record 260 submissions for the contest. From these, a jury selected ten acts to compete in the final which took place last night. The winner was decided by a combination of public and jury votes, with Gromee featuring Lukas Meijer narrowly beating second place Happy Prince after winning the public vote.
You can watch Gromee featuring Lukas Meijer perform “Light Me Up” below:
Poland debuted in the Eurovision Song Contest back in 1994 with Edyta Górniak and it is to date their most successful entry, finishing in second place. After a period where the country failed to make the final on six out of seven occasions, they took a break from the competition for two years. Since their return to the competition in 2014, Poland has qualified for the final every year. Michal Szoak who represented the country in 2016 became one of their most memorable entries. After the jury vote he found himself down in second to the last place, however, the public vote turned that all around. Michal finished third in the televote, seeing him finish eighth overall in the competition.
Poland will be hoping they can keep up with recent form and make it through to the grand final once again 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, The Humans for Romania, Sevak Khanagyan for Armenia, Ari Ólafsson for Iceland and Elina Nechayeva for Estonia.
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.