The Swedish broadcaster SVT announced the dates for next years Swedish national final and preliminary rounds. The SVT uses the same format as in 2002 and 2003 with four preliminary rounds, a wild-card round and a big final.
32 songs will be selected for the Melodifestivalen 2004. Each prelimi nary round will feature eight songs of which two will go directly to the big final. The songs that finish in 3rd and 4th place of each preliminary-round will compete for the two remaining places in the final in the wild-card round, a week before the final.
The dates and cities for the Melodifestivalen 2004 are as follows:
Preliminary round 1: february 21st in Karlstad (Löfbergs Lila)
Preliminary round 2: february 28th in Göteborg (Scandinavium)
Preliminary round 3: march 6th in Umeå (UmeåArena)
Preliminary round 4: march 13th in Malmö (MalmöMässan)
Wild-card round: march 14th in Stockholm (from a tv-studio)
Final: march 20th in Stockholm (Globen)
The SVT will announce the titles of the participating songs on 31st october 2003.
The EBU hasn't announced the deadline for submitting songs for the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 yet, so the SVT might have some problems with the presented time-schedule. This year, when the Eurovision Songcontest was held on may 24th, the deadline was set on march 20th. Next year's Eurovision Song Contest will be held a week earlier, on may 15th.
