Tonight, the second semifinal of Finland’s Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu will take place. After three semis and a final, UMK 2016 will have a winner, who will go on to represent Finland at the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 in Stockholm. A total of 18 acts will compete across the three semis, with nine of them proceeding to the competition’s grand final, this coming 27 February.

The show

Each of the three semi-finals will be broadcast from Finnish broadcaster YLE’s studios in Helsinki and will see 6 acts battle it out for 3 tickets to the UMK grand final. The top three songs will be chosen by public televoting with proceeds to be donated to charity Nenäpäivä-säätiö, which fund projects in developing countries.

Tonight’s show will be hosted by Roope Salminen. His co-host, Krista Siegfrids, is currently participating in the second semifinal of Sweden’s Melodifestivalen 2016.

How to watch

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The show will be aired at 20.00 CET:

• YLE TV2
• YLE Webcast

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The participants

Competing in the first semi-final are:

1. Attention 2 – Ready for the show
2. Cristal Snow – Love is blind
3. Annica Milán & Kimmo Blom – Good enough
4. Rafaela Truda – Rise up
5. Ylona – Blazing Fire
6. Mikael Saari – On it goes

UMK 2016 Agenda

• 06/02: Semi-final 1
• 13/02: Semi-final 2
• 20/02: Semi-final 3
• 27/02: Final

Finland debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1961 and has won the event once in 2006 with Lordi’s Hard rock hallelujah. Last year, the country was represented by punk-rock band Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, but failed to qualify to the contest’s grand final.

Stay tuned to esctoday.com for more information on Finland, the 2016 Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu and the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest.