Latvia reveal dates for Supernova 2018

The Latvian broadcaster, LTV, have announced that the first broadcast of Supernova will take place on Saturday 3rd February. This marks a change from its previous place in the broadcasting schedule, Sunday evening. The subsequent three shows will be broadcast on the subsequent Saturdays, culminating in a final on 24th February.

21 acts, three semifinals

Following an online vote on the longlist of 63 entries, 30 entries were then presented live in front of a panel. From this, 21 were selected to take part in the televised rounds of Supernova. This year’s competition will feature eight female soloists, five male soloists and eight groups/duos.
No official confirmation on the semifinal allocation for these 21 entrants has been made yet. However, some of the competitors have taken to their social media to announce their own participation date. The official LTV Supernova Facebook page has also been publishing the songs, sometimes also confirming the competitors’ semifinal.
https://www.facebook.com/supernovaLTV/posts/921608907989028
Aminata returns to Supernova as a songwriter again this year, having previously won the competition herself in 2015 with “Love Injected”, finishing in 6th place at Eurovision and recieving the highest score for a Latvian entry to date, 186 points. She was also victorious in 2016 as the writer of “Heartbeat” for Justs. She has co-written “What I Had with You” by Ed Rallidae with Kaspars Ansons.
Early hype was being created on social media during the online voting stage for Jenny May’s entry “Soledad”. The entry has been written by an international team of songwriters consisting of Maija Stuģe, Martin Karl Hägglund, Martin Björn Hanzén, Tim Erik Åström and Michael Javier Hernan Barraza Alfaro.

Sustained success since the launch of Supernova

Supernova was a brand new format launched by LTV in 2015. The decision was taken to create a new format after Eirodziesma, and subsequently the rebranded Dziesma, began to fail to produce successful entries for the Baltic nation. Latvia’s results took a dramatic upturn with Aminata written entries winning the first two editions of the competition and securing a top 10 finish at the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna. Last year, Triana Park were popular pre-contest with Eurovision fans across the world but less so with both the international juries and televoters for the contest in Kyiv, finishing in 18th place in their semifinal, propping up the rest of the scoreboard.

Are you excited for the return of Supernova in 2018? Did you participate in the online vote stage of the competition? Let us know in the comments below and on social media @ESCXTRA.