Italy: Diodato wins Sanremo 2020 and will fly to Rotterdam!

by Stefano 3,578 views

Buonasera Roma! Or should we say buonasera Sanremo? The 70th Sanremo Music Festival concluded last night with an exciting climax. After five long nights and endless singling, 24 acts and numerous national and international hosts, we have a winner: Diodato!

It is one of the most notorious music festivals across Europe. Its well established haul reached the 70th edition in the famous Ariston Theater, where the Italian music industry gathered for almost one week. 24 entries were competing in the Campioni section. Among them several past Sanremo winners like Marco Masini (1990, 2004), Tosca (1996), Michele Zarrillo (1987), and also former Eurovision representative Raphael Gualazzi (2011) and Francesco Gabbani (2017).

And the winner is…

The Grand final of Sanremo took place last night with only 23 of the 24 competing entries still in the game, after the disqualification of Bugo and Morgan for not having completed their performance during the fourth night. Three juries selected the winners: the televote (34%), the expert (33%) and the demoscopic (33%).

After the first round of votes, the host of Sanremo 2020 Amadeus announced the ranking. The three most voted acts went to another round of voting. They were:

  • Diodato- Fai rumore
  • Pinguini Tattici Nucleari- with Ringo Starr
  • Francesco Gabbani- Viceversa

The televote crowned Francesco Gabbani with 38,9% of the votes, followed by Pinguini Tattici Nucleari with 37,2% and Diodato with 23,9%. However, the two other juries determined another final ranking:

  1. Diodato – 39,3%
  2. Francesco Gabbani – 33,9%
  3. Pinguini Tattici Nucleari – 26,8%

Consequently Diodato was declared winner of the 2020 Sanremo Festival with the song Fai rumore. During the night Italian broadcaster RAI also confirmed that Diodato will represent Italy at the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam.

Diodato also received two special awards: the “Mia Martini” critics prize and the “Lucio Dalla” press room prize. Other special awards were given to Rancore with Eden (“Sergio Bardotti” Prize to the best lyrics) and Tosca with Ho amato tutto (“Giancarlo Bigazzi” Prize to the best musical composition).

You can watch the performance of Diodato below:

https://youtu.be/yFr8xbkvFLc