Romania have announced their spokesperson for this year’s Grand Final, and its another former Eurovision participant! Ilinca, who, along with Alex Florea, represented Romania in 2017 with “Yodel It!”. She will be back to announce which entry the Romanian jury gives its 12 points to.
Today, Eurovision Romania announced that Ilinca will be the Romanian representative at this year’s Grand Final in Tel Aviv. Two years ago, she brought Romania its most recent top 10 finish, with “Yodel It!”. She, along with Alex Florea, finished in 7th place with 282 points.
She is the latest former-participant to be returning to the contest as a spokesperson this year. Other spokespeople include Gaga Abashidze (member of Irao, Georgia 2018), Izhar Cohen (Israel 1978), Lea Sirk (Slovenia 2018), Eric Saade (Sweden 2011) and Sinplus (Switzerland 2012).
About Ilinca
The 20-year-old is no stranger to TV. In 2012, Ilinca participated in the second season of Românii au talent. In 2013, she participated in Romania’s version of the X Factor with the group Trupa Quattro. The year after, she was a semi-finalist on Vocea Romaniei. In 2013, Ilinca participated in the third season of X Factor with Trupa Quattro. Of course, she also participated in (and won) Romania’s Selecția Națională back in 2017.
Since Eurovision, she has released two singles and was invited back to Selectia Nationala as a judge. She also won ‘Song of the Year’ at the 2017 Radar de Media Awards with Yodel It!. With her strong social media following, including over 20,000 subscribers on YouTube, she has continued to engage in the contest. She released one video looking back at her experience, and another paying tribute to her favourites from the 2018 contest.
Romania at the Eurovision Song Contest
Since the introduction of the Eurovision semi-finals in 2004, Romania appeared in every single grand final up until 2016. In 2016, Romania selected Ovidiu Anton to represent the country with “Moment of Silence”. Nevertheless, just a few weeks before the rehearsals in Stockholm, the EBU expelled TVR due to failures to pay debt. As a result, Romania withdrew from the contest.
In 2017, Ilinca and Alex scored Romania’s fourth best result in the history of the contest. In addition, they certainly provided one of the contest’s most memorable performances in recent years!
Unfortunately, the success was short-lived, as Romania suffered its worst result ever the following year. The Human’s failed to qualify to the Grand Final in Lisbon last year, breaking Romania’s 100% qualification record. Ester Peony will be hoping to bring Romania back to the final this year. She is performing 6th in semi-final 2.
Are you excited to see Ilinca at the Grand Final? Would you like to see her represent Romania again in the future? Let us know! Be sure to stay updated by following @ESCXTRA on Twitter, @escxtra on Instagram and liking our Facebook page for the latest updates! We’ll also be posting plenty of content on our YouTube in the run up to Tel Aviv!
