HRT revealed the Dora 2020 competing entries about two months ago, but the release date was not specified. The broadcaster recently commented that the entries will, in fact, not be revealed before the national selection.
Dora exhibition opens
A week ago, an exhibition for Dora opened at the Juraj Sporer Arts Pavillion in Opatija. The Festivalska Opatija: Priča o Dori (Festival Opatija: The Story of Dora) exhibition features photographs of all winners of the festival. In addition to the photos, visitors can see statues of Dora made from various material, as well as information about the festival’s history throughout the years. The exhibition is organized by the city of Opatija in cooperation with HRT. It will be open until 29 February, when Dora 2020 will air.
When will we listen to the Dora entries?
When HRT posted about the exhibition, the question about the release of the competing songs was raised, to which the broadcaster responded that the songs will not be revealed before the show. It then went on to explain that the rules of Dora prohibit the release of the songs before the show.
However, the broadcaster did not specify whether they will release any snippets before the show, just like last year.
Dora 2020
Dora will once again take place to select the country’s entry for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest. A total of 16 entries will compete and, as mentioned earlier, the selection will take part on 29 February. The 16 competing entries were revealed on 23 December 2019, with one of the songs being replaced just shortly after.
A few weeks ago, HRT revealed the voting rules of the festival. A combination of jury and televoting will select the winner. The jury voting will be divided into five regions: Zagret, Split, Rijeka, Osijek and Varaždin and Čakovec. Each jury group will consist of three members – one HRT member, one HDS member and one HDU member. The juries vote by ranking the songs from 1st to 16th. After the members of the jury vote, the songs will receive points according to their overall placement by the specific jury. Each jury group gives out points from 1 (worst) to 16 (best). In case of a tie within the jury group, the members vote on which song receives the highest score. When all jury groups award their scores, they are combined and the songs receive points from 1 to 16 according to their overall score from the juries.
A similar procedure is done for the televoting. The most voted song receives 16 points while the least voted receives 1 point. Both the jury and televoting give out a total of 136 points. According the rules, in the case of a tie the winner will be the song ranked higher by the public.
Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest
Croatia has been a participant in the Eurovision as an individual state since 1993. Since then, they have managed to place 4th on two occasions: in 1996 and 1999, which still remains their best results to date. Ever since the introduction of the semi-final format, the country managed to qualify in 7 out of the 14 contests they took part in.
Last year, Dora 2019 winner Roko did not manage to impress with his song “The Dream” and failed to qualify to the final after he placed 14th in the semi-final.
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