Montenegro, last night selected their representative for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Vanja Radovanovic won the countries national selection show Montevizja 2018 with “Inje” and will perform the song in the second semi-final in Lisbon. “Inje” translates as mist and is a ballad with some incredible instrumentation.
Thirty songs were submitted to Montenegrin broadcaster RTCG before a jury selected the best five entries. These entries were then performed before a jury before the top three went on to perform in a super final with Vanja Radovanovic emerging as the winner.
You can watch Vanda perform “Inje” below:
Montenegro first entered the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007. Before this, they participated as part of Yugoslavia (1961 to 1992) and then as part of Serbia and Montenegro (2004 to 2006). Since their debut, they have only managed to qualify for the final twice. Their best result was in 2015 when Knex finished thirteenth with the song “Adio”. In 2017, Slavko Kalezic represented the country in Kyiv, Ukraine with “Space” but was unable to qualify for the final.
Montenegro will be hoping they can improve on their recent results and qualify for the final 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 and Alekseev for Belarus.
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.