Melodifestivalen is an annual song competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television (SVT) and Sveriges Radio (SR). It determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almost every year since 1959. In the early 2000s, the competition was the most popular television programme in Sweden; it is also broadcast on radio and the Internet. In 2012, the heats averaged 3.3 million viewers, and over an estimated four million people in Sweden watched the final, almost half of the Swedish population.
Melodifestivalen 2005 was the selection for the 45th song to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest. It was the 44th time that this system of picking a song had been used. Five heats had taken place to select the ten songs for the final, in Gothenburg, Linköping, Skellefteå, Växjö and a Second Chance round in Stockholm. The final was broadcast on SVT1 and Sveriges Radio's P4 network, with viewing figures of approximately 4,055,000 and with 1,519,997 televotes cast. Nanne Grönvall's defeat was met with consternation by many people, who felt that a gap of over 150,000 votes should be enough for victory. There were even calls for SVT to scrap the jury system altogether and simply let the televotes decide the winner. For a comparison, it was noted that Grönvall had received more votes than Lena Philipsson, the popular 2004 winner. However, SVT said that there was nothing they could do about the result. Four finalists topped the Swedish charts. Alcazar and Alcastar got to number one the week before the final, Jimmy Jansson got to the number one some weeks after that with Vi kan gunga, Martin Stenmarck's winner Las Vegas hit the top spot the week after that, while Nanne Grönvall and Håll om mig topped the charts the week after that.
Sweden has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 60 times since making its debut in 1958, missing only three contests since then. Since 1959, the Swedish entry has been chosen through an annual televised competition, known since 1967 as Melodifestivalen. At the 1997 contest, Sweden was one of the first five countries to adopt televoting. Sweden is the only country to have hosted the event in five different decades, three times in Stockholm, twice in Malmö and once in Gothenburg (1985).
Melodifestivalen 2006 was the selection for the 46th song to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest. It was the 45th time that this system of picking a song had been used. Five heats had taken place to select the ten songs for the final, in Leksand, Karlstad, Karlskrona, Gothenburg and a Second Chance round in Stockholm. The final was broadcast on SVT1 and Sveriges Radio's P4 network. Carola Häggkvist was the clear favourite to win the final, with bookmakers making her the favourite and an Aftonbladet web poll showing her to have a clear margin over the other participants. The rehearsals sold out for the fourth year running; however, Carola was unable to perform in the final rehearsal due to throat problems. This led to speculation that the final would be closer than expected. Aftonbladet claimed in April 2006 that the televote may have been tampered with, as various sources reported unexplained voting on their telephone bills. It is clear that this would not have affected the result. Various finalists and heatists entered the Swedish Hitlistan chart after the competition. The second placed song, "Temple of Love", finished fourth in the Eurovision Madrid National Finals Song Contest.
Sweden's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 was Carola with the song "Invincible".
Melodifestivalen 2003 was the selection for the 43rd song to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest. It was the 42nd time that this system of picking a song had been used. Five heats had taken place to select the ten songs for the final, in Jönköping, Gothenburg, Luleå, Sundsvall and a Second Chance round in Stockholm. The final was broadcast on SVT1 and Sveriges Radio's P4 network. The show was watched by 1,230,751 people.
Melodifestivalen 2004 was the selection for the 44th song to represent Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest. It was the 43rd time that this system of picking a song had been used. Five heats had taken place to select the ten songs for the final, in Karlstad, Gothenburg, Umeå, Malmö and a Second Chance round in Stockholm. The final was broadcast on SVT1 and Sveriges Radio's P4 network. The winner was Lena Philipsson with "Det gör ont" who later that year came in 5th place in Eurovision Song Contest 2004 in Turkey with the English-language version It Hurts.
Sanna Viktoria Nielsen is a Swedish singer and television presenter. On her seventh attempt, she won Melodifestivalen in 2014 with the song "Undo" and so represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark, finishing in 3rd place overall. Sanna was one of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 commentators for Sweden and hosted Melodifestivalen 2015 along with comedian Robin Paulsson. She was announced as the new presenter for the sing-along show Allsång på Skansen for the summer of 2016. She hosted Eurovision The Party at the Tele2 Arena for the Eurovision Song Contest 2016.
Melodifestivalen is an event organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television (SVT) and Sveriges Radio (SR) to determine the country's representative at the Eurovision Song Contest. The voting procedures to select the entrant for the annual contest have varied over the years since the country's debut in 1958. The Swedish broadcasters have experimented with techniques including splitting the juries by age, regional voting, and using an "expert" jury. Televoting was controversially first introduced in 1993, as an unannounced experiment. The Swedish telephone network promptly collapsed under the strain of phone calls being made.
Melodifestivalen is an annual song competition organised by Swedish public broadcasters Sveriges Television (SVT) and Sveriges Radio (SR). It determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almost every year since 1959.
Thanks to ABBA's victory the preceding year, Sweden hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1975. Their entry was chosen in Melodifestivalen 1975, and the winner was last year's runner up, Lasse Berghagen, with the song "Jennie, Jennie", which he had written and composed himself.
The song "When Spirits Are Calling My Name" was performed by Roger Pontare in the 2000 Eurovision Song Contest 2000, in representation of Sweden.
Sweden used a national preselction called Melodifestivalen 1983 to select an entry for the 28th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. Winner, being the first participant ever to get maximum points from all of the eleven juries, was the 17-year-old and then unknown Carola Häggkvist, who quickly went on to be one of Sweden's most popular singers. The song she competed with was called "Främling". It was written by Lasse Holm and Monica Forsberg, who had also written the previous winning song together.
Sweden entered the Eurovision Song Contest 1990, held in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.
Sweden entered and won the Eurovision Song Contest 1991, held in Rome, Italy.
After Carola Häggkvist's win in the 1991 contest, Sweden was the host of the Eurovision Song Contest 1992, held in Malmö. Sveriges Television, the Swedish broadcaster, continued to use the Melodifestivalen format to select their entry.
Sweden entered the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Dublin, Ireland. Sveriges Television continued to use the Melodifestivalen contest to select the Swedish entry.
Sweden was represented at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2004 by the Limelights and the song "Varför jag?". the duo of Anna Jalkéus and Liselotte Östblom were the winners of the Lilla Melodifestivalen contest in 2004.
Sweden participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 with the song "I Can't Go On" written by David Kreuger, Hamed "K-One" Pirouzpanah and Robin Stjernberg. The song was performed by Robin Bengtsson. The Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT) organised the national final Melodifestivalen 2017 in order to select the Swedish entry for the 2017 contest in Kyiv, Ukraine. After a six-week-long competition consisting of four heats, a Second Chance round and a final, "I Can't Go On" performed by Robin Bengtsson emerged as the winner after achieving the highest score following the combination of votes from eleven international jury groups and a public vote.
Melodifestivalen 2021 was the 61st edition of the Swedish music competition Melodifestivalen. The competition was organised by Sveriges Television (SVT) and took place over a six-week period between 6 February and 13 March 2021. Due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, all shows of this edition took place in the Annexet in Stockholm, and without an audience. The winner of the competition was Tusse with the song "Voices", who represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where he came fourteenth with 109 points.
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