Festival da Canção 2023 songs available online

Festival da Canção 2023 is set to be the 57th edition of the televised competition that selects Portugal’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. Once again, the competition consists of two semi-finals (on 25 February and 4 March) with twenty entries competing in total, leading to a twelve-song final on 11 March 2023.

Listen online

Today, we got to hear the songs for the first time as RTP published all 20 entries as part of a YouTube playlist. Among the competing artists is Cláudia Pascoal, who represented Portugal in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018.

Now for the science bit

Each semi-final will feature ten competing entries from which six will advance to complete the twelve song line-up in the final.

The results will be decided by one of the more complex arrangements this year. Voting during the semi-finals will be determined by the votes from a jury panel appointed by RTP and public televoting; the first five qualifiers will be based on the 50/50 combination of jury and public voting where both streams of voting assign points from 1–8, 10 and 12 based on ranking, while the sixth qualifier will be determined by a second round of public televoting from the remaining entries.

And because that wasn’t anything like confusing enough, results during the final will be determined by the 50/50 combination of votes from seven regional juries and public televoting, which will be opened following the second semi-final and closed during the final show.

Both the public televote and the juries assign points from 1–8, 10 and 12 based on the ranking developed by both streams of voting.

Competing entries

Fifteen of the composers this year were invited by RTP. The other five were selected from 667 submissions received through an open call for songs. Songs could be submitted in any language. The composers were named back in November with the rest going public today.

First semi final

Second semi final