LRT, the Lithuanian national broadcaster has confirmed that Lithuania will participate at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest next year and that the 2021 Lithuanian entry and act will be determined via its national selection- Pabandom Iš Naujo.

Thus Lithuania joins the list of countries who have so far confirmed their participation at Eurovision 2021 and will be opting for a national selection in order to determine their Eurovision acts and entries for ESC 2021.

LRT has invited the 2020 Lithuanian Eurovision hopefuls The Roop to partake in the 2021 Lithuanian national selection with a direct ticket to the Grand Final following the cancellation of the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The broadcaster has decided to trasnsfer the revenues earned from the televoting at the 2020 Lithuanian national selection to The Rooop. The band is yet to decide if they will partake in the 2021 Lithuanian national final.

One must note that The Roop were hot favourites to belt the 2020 Grand Prix in Rotterdam with their entry ‘On Fire’. The band were also crowned the winners of ESCToday‘s Eurovision 2020 Home Song Contest last weekend with 10,000 plus votes.

Mr. Gytis Oganauskas (LRT General Director) says:

We are all saddened by this situation – the song On Fire was considered one of the main contenders to win the competition. It has received a lot of recognition both in Lithuania and abroad, but unfortunately we will not see in on the big Eurovision stage.

Eurovision is first and foremost a song contest, which is gaining popularity every year in Lithuania, stimulating the creation of new songs and performances, thus attracting many  music producers and performers. We were looking for a solution to not deprive them of this opportunity, and at the same time not to deprive The Roop.

As a result, we have made a somewhat non-standard decision – we will be preparing for a new national selection, and The Roop will be nominated to appear in its finals. We greatly appreciate and thank The Roop for taking a responsible approach to preparing for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

We understand that the group has already invested a lot of time and money in this, so we also decided to transfer to the group the voting funds that were to be used to prepare for their Eurovision staging and preparations.

Lithuania in Eurovision

Lithuania debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 and is yet to win the event. The country achieved its best results in the competition in 2006 when it placed 6th with LT United‘s We are the winners in Athens. The Baltic nation has partaken 20 times in Europe’s favourite television show.

In 2019 Jurij Vevlenko won the golden ticket to Tel Aviv with his entry Run with Lions, despite a magnificent performance Lithuania failed to qualify to the Grand Final in Israel.

Source: LRT