Months after confirming that Serbia will be present at Eurovision 2026, RTS have announced that Pesma za Evroviziju will once again be the format it will use to select it’s Eurovision entry.
Pesma za Evroviziju to continue
The announcement of the national final’s return comes a month after it was revealed that RTS had sacked the producer of the previous edition of the contest. That followed highly politicised edition of the contest in 2025.
RTS have revealed that the Serbian entrant for Vienna will once again be decided by an equally weighted professional jury and televote. They noted that a separate jury of music professionals will decide who makes it through the submission, with the caveat that they may bring in external competitors if the quality of submissions is not to the desired level. The submission window is open now, and will run until the 10th of November.
At present no date for the contest has been confirmed, nor has there been any additional information on the number of participants, and whether the semi finals will continue for the upcoming edition.
Pesma za Evroviziju?
Pesma Za Evroviziju has been the selection show for Serbia’s Eurovision entry since 2022, with Konstrakta winning the inaugural edition. It replaced the iconic Beovizija music festival after RTS lost the rights to use their brand. The show takes place over one week, and consists of two semi-finals each containing a non fixed amount around 15 artists, of which 8 (or 9 in 2022) qualify to the final. Points are awarded via a 50/50 televote-jury split where points are converted to a 12-1 scale. At least 51% of the lyrics of all submitted songs must be in one of Serbia’s official languages.
Serbia’s Eurovision Journey
In 2007, Serbia made its debut as an independent country, having previously participated as part of Yugoslavia and Serbia & Montenegro. There, they were represented by Marija Šerifović with “Molitva”, which managed to win the competition. Since their debut, Serbia has participated 16 times (13 of which, where they qualified for the Grand Final).
Princ represented Serbia at Eurovision 2025 in Basel with his song “Mila”. At this year’s competition, Serbia failed to qualify for the Grand Final, finishing in fourteenth place with 28 points in the semi-final.
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Source: RTS
Photo Credit: Gordan Jović / RTS
Rory Gannon