According to Yle, the UMK winner does not have to participate in Eurovision

This one the winner of the year’s New Music Competition does not have to participate in Eurovision. Yle viihti’s editorial manager tells about it Juha Lahti published on Tuesday in the interview.

The discussion about participating in the Eurovision Song Contest was sparked after 2,400 cultural workers signed an address demanding that Yle withdraw from the Eurovision Song Contest because of Israel’s war in Gaza. The European Broadcasting Union EBU, which organizes Eurovision, decided not to exclude Israel from the contest.

According to UMK’s rules, Finland’s Eurovision representative is chosen in the contest, but according to Juha Lahti, UMK’s winner cannot be forced to participate in Eurovision because it “would not produce a good result in any way”.

The same thing was confirmed by UMK’s chief producer Anssi Autio For Helsingin Sanomat in January.

UMK’s biggest pre-favorites Pete Parkkonen and Linda Lampenius liked In an interview with HS unreasonable if the responsibility for participating in Eurovision is shifted to a single artist in a public discussion.

Parkkonen and Lampenius are ready to answer the question about participating in Eurovision if they win UMK.

Juha Lahti for the time being, Yle does not say how Yle plans to decide the representative of Finland, if the winner of UMK does not want to participate in the finals.

“Yle participates in the Eurovision Song Contest, if security is taken care of, the number of participating broadcasting companies will remain large, and the costs will not increase unreasonably. In addition, Yle requires that the Eurovision Song Contest implement the agreed rule changes, which will ensure that the voting result cannot be manipulated,” says Lahti.

Public vote attention has been paid to the manipulation, because at last year’s Eurovision it was revealed that the state of Israel had actively campaigned on social media for Israel’s representative song.

According to the EBU’s investigation, no evidence of any actual manipulation was found, but it decided to change the rules of the competition after last year. This year, the viewer can only vote ten times instead of the previous 20, and the competitor and the broadcasting companies are not allowed to participate in the campaigns of third parties such as governments.

The UMK final will be held on Saturday 28.2. Tampere’s Nokia Arena. Yle will show the competition live from 21:00.