With the last national final having been held, it is time to officially launch the esctoday.com National Final Awards 2010, which will honour the best songs and performances not winning their national finals. The polls for the pre-nomination phase already kicked off last December after the first national final had been held. o

How do the nominations take place?

The nominations will take place over two phases:

1. In the first phase, two polls were launched right after every national final. In the first one, you can vote for your favourite performance not to win and in the second one, you can vote for your favourite song not to win.
2. The second phase will see the actual nominees being selected. A poll will be launched for every category with one possible nominee per country and you can vote for your favourite to get a nomination. The top four of each poll will be nominated for an esctoday.com National Final Award while a fifth additional nominee will be added by an esctoday.com jury. The only exception are the Best song not to qualify category, which will include eight nominees and the Best act elminated in a semi final, quarter final or heat category, whose nominees will not be determined through a poll.

Which songs/performances can be nominated?

In the main categories, only songs/performances that were presented in the national FINAL can be nominated. There will be a special award for the Best act elminated in a semi final, quarter final or heat. If a winning song was withdrawn/disqualified, it can still not be nominated being the original winner of the national final.

What are the categories?

1. Best song
2. Best performance
3. Best ballad
4. Best mid-tempo song
5. Best up-tempo song
6. Best pop/dance song
7. Best rock song
8. Best folk song
9. Best female performance
10. Best male performance
11. Best duo/group performance
12. Best act eliminated in a semi final, quarter final or heat
13. Best national final
14. Best staging and presentation
15. Best voting system

Three new awards will be given out to honour the various different genres: Best rock song, Best pop/dance song and Best folk song. There will be no award for Best webcast this year, as according to the rections posted during live events, none of the webcasts was working perfectly for the vast majority.

How to vote in the first phase?

You can still vote in all polls of the first phase until this Friday, 26th March 2010, 20:00 CET.

Country	Best performance not to qualify	Best song not to qualify
Albania	here	here
Finland	here	here
Norway	here	here
Denmark	here	here
Iceland	here	here
Cyprus	here	here
Netherlands	here
Armenia	here	here
Poland	here	here
FYR Macedonia	here	here
Malta	here	here
Slovenia	here	here
Spain	here	here
Georgia	here	here
Slovakia	here	here
Latvia	here	here
Bulgaria	here	here
Lithuania	here	here
Ireland	here	here
Moldova	here	here
Croatia	here	here
Romania	here	here
Portugal	here	here
Russia	here	here
Germany	here	here
Estonia	here	here
United Kingdom	here
Greece	here	here
Sweden	here	here
Serbia	here	here
Israel	here	here
Azerbaijan	here	here
Ukraine	here	here

Schedule

27th December 2009 – 26th March 2010	Pre-nominations
29th March 2010 – 4th April 2010	Nominations
5th April 2010 – 25th April 2010	Voting
26th April 2010 – 2nd May 2010	Results