Country Portugal Selected song "Há dias assim" | Selected entrant Filipa Azevedo | |
Selection process Festival da Canção 2010
50% Jury
50% Televoting Selection date(s) Online vote
21–27 January 2010
Semi-finals
2 March 2010
4 March 2010
Final
6 March 2010 Semi-final result Qualified (4th, 89 points) | ||
Portugal will select its entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 through the Festival da Canção competition, organised by Portuguese national broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP). A number of changes will be made to the format of the contest from the past number of years, with two semi-finals and a final being held over one week in March 2010 to select the winner to represent Portugal in Oslo, Norway in May 2010.
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Festival da Canção 2010
Festival da Canção 2010 will be held over one week in early March 2010, with semi-finals on 2 and 4 March and the final set to be held on 6 March. The contest will be held at the Campo Pequeno, an old bullring, in Lisbon, which has the ability to hold up to 10,000 people, enabling the biggest Festival da Canção ever.
Until mid January, authors, singers and groups can submit entries for the competition through the RTP website. An expert jury will select between 30 and 35 entries to progress to an online vote, as was introduced in 2009 Contest. Voters from across the world can vote for their favourite songs over the internet, with the top 24 songs progressing to the semi-final stage. RTP will now allow foreign composers to compete in Festival da Canção, after regulating the contest to Portuguese composers only in 2009. However the competing performers must be Portuguese, and the song must also be performed in the Portuguese language.
Two semi-finals will be held, each containing 12 songs. Televoting will solely select the top six songs from each semi-final which will progress to the final. In the final the winner will be selected through 50/50 jury and televoting.
Online voting
420 songs were submitted to RTP, a slight increase from last year's total. 30 songs were selected by a professional jury of José Poiares, the Portuguese Head of Delegation, and music producers Fernando Martins, Ramón Galarza and To Zé Brito. The 30 songs were announced on 20 January, and 90 second clips of each song were placed on its website on 21 January for the voting.
Shortly after voting began it was reported by the Eurovision fan community in Portugal that Homens da Luta, current leaders in the voting with the song "Luta assim não dá", had been uploaded on the Internet in May 2009, and performed live in Lisbon in May, breaking Eurovision contest rules. The following day RTP disqualified the song, leaving 29 songs in the contest.
Voting closed at 23:59 GMT on 27 January, with Filipa Azevedo declared the winner of the voting with 2,992 votes. The top 24 songs will progress to the semi-finals, with the running order decided on 1 February by a draw.
Semi-finals
The semi-finals of Festival da Canção 2010 will be held on 2 and 4 March. The 24 songs from that qualified from the online selection will compete for twelve places in the final. The semi-final allocation and running order for the competing songs was held on 1 February at the RTP headquarters in Lisbon. This will be the first Festival da Canção to be broadcast in HD.
Semi-final 1
The first semi-final was held on 2 March. From the twelve competing acts Filipa Galvão Telles, Jorge Guerreiro, The Agency, Nuno Pinto, Filipa Azevedo, and Vanessa were chosen to progress to the final.
11,656 televotes were cast during the semi-final, with Nuno Pinto winning the semi-final.
Semi-final 2
The second semi-final was held on 4 March. Six acts were selected from the 12 act line-up to progress to the final: Banda Trocopasso, Ricardo Martins, Seis Po' Meia Dúzia, Catarina Pereira, Gonçalo Tavares, and Rui Nova.
23,878 televotes were cast during the second semi-final, with Catarina Pereira the winner of this semi-final.
Final
The final of Festival da Canção 2010 was held on 6 March. Filipa Azevedo was declared the winner with the song "Há dias assim", which got full marks from the juries and came fourth with the televote. The televoters favourite, Catarina Pereira, failed to win as she only came fifth with the juries, placing second overall. 42,768 televotes were cast during the final.
At Eurovision
Portugal competed in the first semi-final of the contest on 25 May, performing in 14th position and ending 4th in a field of 17, with a total of 89 points. Portugal then competed in the final of the contest on 29 May, performing 23rd on stage, after Germany and before Israel. It ended 18th, with 43 points.