A few weeks ago, the Latvian national broadcaster Latvijas Televīzija (LTV) confirmed to ESCToday its participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon. To our great pleasure, LTV has released some details on their song submission process and the upcoming national selection show Supernova 2018.

Schedule of song submissions

The candidate songs will be submitted electronically to the official website of the show https://supernova.lsm.lv/, whilst the applications will be open from 6 September 10:00 to 15 October 23:59 EEST.

In fact, Latvia has given us several eccentric Eurovision performances, but as the broadcaster’s press release reports, this year the contest Supernova 2018 is looking for a contemporary pop music song, competitive in the international music market and a charismatic artist who will use his/her success in the competition for a long-term international career.

Novelties for the Latvian selection

Furthermore, LTV reveals some changes that are going to be applied for the first time in 2018. When it comes to Supernova 2018, the copyright of a foreign composer and writer in a song cannot be more than a 30%. The aim of this change is to be possible to attract foreign professionals as song coauthors or studio producers in order to create higher quality and more competitive tracks for the international market, but also to help the exchange of experience between Latvian and foreign professionals.

LTV will also be following a tactic inspired by the Estonian national selection Eesti laul and the Latvian Music Development Society/Latvian Music Export. For the first time in the Supernova 2018 contest, the songs will be written in a special songwriting camp.

As stated in the press release, the 4th Supernova music contest is going to be very important for the employees of LTV, as their purpose will be once more to produce a spectacular and outstanding show that will fascinate the Latvian viewers.

Latvia at Eurovision 2017

The Baltic nation had chosen its 2017 Eurovision entry via its national selection Supernova. The winners of the show were the band Triana Park with their electronic dance entry Line, achieving a very high result, thus 51.56% with the public vote. Despite a remarkable performance and the memorable look of the lead singer Agnese Rakovska, they only came last (18th) in the first semi-final with 21 points.

Here’s their appearance at the first semi-final on 9 May:

Will 2018 be the lucky year of Latvia at Eurovision?