Croatian singer and Dora 2020 Damir Kedžo revealed he is submitting a song for Dora 2023. In his Instragram story, Damir confirmed his participation by clicking a link on broadcaster HRT‘s website. Could 2023 finally be the year he sees the Eurovision stage?
Damir previously competed in the Croatian preselection show, winning the competition in 2020 with his powerful song ‘Divlji Vjetre’, which translates to wild wind. Unfortunately, the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled soon after Damir’s win due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, Damir was not automatically chosen to take the stage for Croatia. HRT decided to revamp their national selection to choose their representative. Damir releaved that he didn’t have the right song to participate in Dora and therefore missed his chance to represent Croatia once again.
But apparently, the desire to be a part of Eurovision was still there for Damir. No other info about his song has been made public yet.
Dora 2023
In de upcoming edition of Dora we will see some changes compared the last few years. The most important one being the introduction of Semi-Finals. The selection will be divided in two semi-finals and one final. This setup sounds all too familiar for us Eurovision fans! The participating songs will be released in January, much earlier than usual. This gives the public the opportunity to listen to the songs far ahead of the live contest. HRT will be promoting the songs for five weeks, up until the final, which will take place in Opatija in February 2023.
Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest
Croatia has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest as an independent country since 1993, and was only absent in 2014 and 2015. They received their best result in 1996 and 1999 where they placed 4th overall in both years. Croatia has not qualified for the Grand Final since 2017, where Jacques Houdek participated with song ‘My Friend’, which was in both English and Italian. It received 128 points in total and placed 13th overall. In 2022, Mia Dimšić won Dora and represented Croatia with the song ‘Guilty Pleasure’. She participated in the first semi-final and placed 11th with 75 points, narrowly missing out on a place in the Grand Final.
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