After receiving 114 submission for the return of their national selection, Slovenian broadcaster RTV SLO has just revealed the short-list of 12 artists who will compete in the show next year.
12 artists and songs
The broadcaster revealed the names of the artists and title of the songs yesterday afternoon, revealing a new name every 20 minutes. The list is as follows:
- Eva Pavli – “Niti”
- KiKi – “O-ou!”
- Jon Vitezič – “Vse ti dam”
- Trine – “Grace”
- Klemen – “How much time do we have left?”
- Žan Videc – “Pusti da gori”
- ANNA – “Čau”
- July Jones – “New Religion”
- ZveN- “Divja”
- PolarAce – “Kind”
- Astrid & The Scandals – “Touché”
- RAI – “Frederick’s Dead”
Some of these entrants are returning to the selection, like July Jones (EMA 2022) and Jon Vitezič (EMA Freš 2022, the pre-selection show at the time).
Another big name here is Klemen, aka Klemen Slakonja, a famous Slovenian actor, impersonator and singer, who rose to international fame with Youtube parodies of world leaders like “Ruf Mich Angela” (about Angela Merkel), “Putin, Putout” (about Vladimir Putin) and “Golden Dump” (about Donald Trump).
Klemen also hosted EMA in 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2020. In 2011, he performed a tribute act, “16 let skomin” in which he covered all 16 previous winners of EMA. He performed another, comic and updated version, in 2020, for the 25 years of Slovenia at Eurovision.
A single show for a selection comeback
RTV SLO has internally selected Slovenia’s entry for the last two years (Joker Out in 2023, and Raiven in 2024). Earlier this season, they announced the return of EMA for Basel 2025, although in a lighter format than the previous editions, which followed a pre-selection show in several rounds, EMA Freš.
This time, the selection will consist of a single show, a final, in which all twelve artists will compete, over two rounds.
- In the first round, five juries of five members each will award points to their top 10 songs, in the Eurovision style (1-to-8-10-12), each jury representing a certain category of individuals interested in the selection process:
- A music professionals jury
- A television jury (TV hosts, editors, directors, etc.)
- A radio jury (radio hosts, journalists, etc.)
- An OGAE Slovenia jury (the “official” Eurovision fanclub in Slovenia)
- An international “Eurovision influencer” jury (online journalists, fan media, bloggers/vloggers, etc.)
- The top 2 songs of the jury vote will head to the second round, a superfinal held on the same show, where the televote alone will decide on the winner
The show will take place on February 1st, the first “Super Saturday” of the 2025 season. On the same evening will also be broadcast the finals of Eurosong (Belgium) and Benidorm Festival (Spain), as well as the semi-final of Supernova (Latvia), the 4th heat of Eurovizija.LT (Lithuania) and the first show of Melodifestivalen (Sweden).
What do you think of this lineup? Any favourite so far? Tell us more in the comments below or on social media at @escxtra !
