German public broadcaster, NDR, has announced the date of the country's national selection for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in May in Belgrade.

The German representative in Belgrade will be selected on March 6th 2008, in a national final to be aired by NDR, the public German broadcaster participating in Eurovision.

As esctoday.com reported back in September, NDR is considering the option of enlarging the number of participants from 3 to 5 to show a wider spectrum of musical styles. Then, NDR's director of programs Volker Herres steted that "The fact that Germany did not too well in 2006 and 2007 had nothing to do withthe quality of the German participants. Thisis rather a problem at an international level." Apart from this there will be no big changes in the german preselection. The national final will be held as usual at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg.

Germany, as member of the big-4, is automatically qualified for the final. The 2008 German entrant will perform on the Belgrade Arena stage on May 24th 2008.

This year, Germany's representative Roger Cicero with the song Fraun regier'n die Welt placed 19th in Helsinki (Finland).