Following the end of the final show of the San Marinese national selection, we finally know who will be representing San Marino at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest!

Following the introduction of the revolutionary national selection mechanism, which would eventually select the San Marinese representative for Eurovision 2018, back in October of last year, thousands of applicants from all over Europe and around the world applied.

The choice has been made: Jessika & Jenifer will succeed to Valentina Monetta & Jimmie Wilson! A duo succeeds to a duo. The Maltese and German ladies will represent the only participating micro-state at Eurovision with their pop-rap song, Who we are.

What happened tonight?

All 11 finalists, who had qualified from the semi-finals held on the 9 and 16 February, performed their songs for the selection and were then left waiting for the results from the jury panel and from the crowdfunding vote.

Here were tonight’s performers:

• Jenifer Brening (Germany) – Until the morning light
• Giovanni Montalbano (Italy) – Per quello che mi dai
• Franklin (Malta) – Stay
• Camilla (Norway) – Yo no soy tu chica
• Sebastian Schmidt (Germany) – Stay
• Tinashe (Zimbabwe) – Free yourself
• Judah (Israel) – Stay
• Jessika feat. Jenifer Brening (Malta) – Who we are
• Irol feat. Sebastian Schmidt (San Marino) – Sorry
• Sara de Blue –  Out of the twilight
• Emma (Finland) – Diamonds

Notably we have some familiar Eurovision related names, such as Judah Gavra who participated in Kdam 2013 and attempted to represent Israel in Malmö; but as we already know, Moran Mazor won the selection and represented the nation in Sweden.

Most recently we have Emma Sandström, who tried last year to represent her home country Finland in Kyiv with the song Circle of light, which finished 3rd in UMK 2017.

There was a technical difficulty during Sebastian Schmidt’s performance of Stay; it was minor and involved the in-ear monitor system, meaning that the singer had to restart his performance.

Austrian jury member and Eurovision 2016 entrant, Zoë, sang her entry at the 2016 contest Loin d’ici after all the songs had been performed.

Eurovision 2018

San Marino will be performing in the first half of the second semi-final on the 10 May in Lisbon.

If they manage to qualify, they will eventually perform in the Grand Final for the second time in the history of the contest as they have only qualified once in their 8 previous appearances, back in 2014 when Valentina Monetta sang Maybe in Copenhagen.

As we say 3rd time’s the charm as we know she represented the nation 3 times in a row from 2012 to 2014.

She returned last year in Kyiv with Jimmie Wilson and both performed their disco track Spirit of the night and scored only 1 point in the second semi-final coming last and therefore not qualifying.