It’s time we found out what’s happening in Italy regarding their 2018 Sanremo Music Festival! The favourite music show of the Italians determines the representative of the Mediterranean country at Eurovision almost every year, as the festival’s winner is the first to be offered the Italian ticket to the contest. The 68th annual music event of the country will be taking place from 6 to 10 February 2018 at the Ariston Theater.

Following the completion of song submissions, the national broadcaster of the country RAI has now released more information regarding the artists and songs that have been submitted.

As RAI has stated, there are 646 proposed artists for Sanremo Music Festival for the Nuove Proposte competition; 76 of them are groups and all the rest (570) are individuals (305 men and 265 women). This marks an increase in comparison to last year’s number, when the broadcaster had received a 15% less submitted entries.

Italian “Center” takes it all

When it comes to the origin of each applicant, most of them come from Lazio region, the region where the capital Rome belongs. In addition to this, RAI has released a full list of how many submissions have been received by each Italian region.

Here’s the list (in alphabetical order):

• Abruzzo: 20
• Aosta Valley: 1
• Basilicata: 5
• Calabria: 34
• Campania: 88
• Emilia Romagna: 27
• Friuli Venezia Giulia: 5
• Lazio: 123
• Liguria: 6
• Lombardia: 63
• Marche: 14
• Molise: 6
• Piedmont: 35
• Puglia: 55;
• Sardinia: 14
• Sicily: 50
• Tuscany: 44
• Trentino: 4
• Umbria: 6
• Veneto: 17

Moreover, there are 29 songs received beyond the Italian borders.

Entries evaluation and jury names

Right now the appointed by RAI jury is going to whittle down all the 646 Nuove Proposte entries and establish which of them will proceed to next stage, the live auditions set to take place on 6 November in Rome. They will be 68 and not 60, as the artistic director wishes for the 68th edition of Sanremo Festival.

Regarding this change, the artistic director Claudio Baglioni has stated:

We have received a very high number of proposals to examine, with great enthusiasm and favor with a great creative liveliness and a fascinating variety of musical and poetic styles. It was really difficult to evaluate and choose from so many valuable projects and, unfortunately, some interesting songs and singers have come back. That’s why, we decided to bring from 60 to 68 young artists to hear in the next live auditions: 68 like the next festival at Sanremo Festival we are working on.

After the 68th will also be added the winner of the Festival New Voices New Castrocaro Terme and Terra del Sole (2017 edition).

The professionals list making up the special committee is as follows:

• Claudio Baglioni – artistic director
• Claudio Fasulo – deputy director RAI1 and author of numerous editions of the Festival
• Massimo Giuliano – former record player, connoisseur of the Italian and international music scene
• Massimo Martelli – director of the Festival several times, film director
• Duccio Forzano – TV director
• Geoff Westley – international music producer, author of some memorable Italian record labels

Afterwards, the 12 selected artists are going to take the stage on 15 December, the day when the televised event Sarà Sanremo will be airing on RAI1. Only 6 of them will eventually join in the Nuove Proposte show of Sanremo 2018, along with the 2 Area Sanremo winners.

Italy at Eurovision

Italy was one of the 7 countries which took part at the very first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956. The country has achieved two victories in the competition; in 1964 and in 1990. After their 1998 withdrawal, the Italians returned to the contest in 2011 after a long break of 14 years.

The latest winner of the Sanremo Festival has been the Italian singer Francesco Gabbani with his majestic entry Occidentali’s Karma. Despite being the absolute favorite for the Eurovision victory until the day of the Grand Final, he ended 6th at the scoreboard with 334 points.

Who will make it to the final Sanremo shows?