As predicted last night by esctoday.com's partner website, Songfestival Web-log, popular dutch trio, de Toppers, will represent The Netherlands at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow next May. National broadcaster NOS has also confirmed that a national final will take place on 1st February 2009 to select the song that they will take to Russia.
de Toppers is made up of Gerard Joling (Eurovision Song Contest 1988), Gordon (Dutch national final participant in 1990 and 2003) and Rene Froger. They're very popular in The Netherlands and their concerts are always sold out. The trio play at the Amsterdam Arena every year to a capacity crowd of 50.000 people.
The Dutch National final will be held at the 1st of February and there will be an open submission for songs until the 23th of november. NOS has also found a new partner to broadcast the national final, which will be the TROS. TROS already transmitted the Dutch semi-finals of 2003, 2004 and 2005. There's no information yet about the host of the show. The Eurovision Song Contest will be broadcasted as usual by NOS.
NOS will announce all the information relating to the group's participation and the format of a new national final on 30th September. The broadcaster will be hoping that de Toppers' huge popularity in The Netherlands will spread across Europe to take the country back to the Eurovision Song Contest final after missing out on a place in the final since 2004.
Stay tuned to esctoday.com and partner website Songfestival Web-log (in Dutch language) for all the latest news about The Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Contest.
