RAI, the Italian national broadcaster has published the rules and regulations for the 75th Sanremo Festival and confirmed the dates for the competition.

The winner of Sanremo 2025 will be eligible to compete at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland and thus will represent Italy at Europe’s favourite television show.

Sanremo 2025 will consist of five live shows and will run from 11-15 February:

• 11/02/2025- First Serata – (24 BIG Category acts will perform and will be voted by voted by the press centre, tv and web jury)
• 12/03/2025- Second Serata ( 12 BIG Category will perform and will be voted by radio jury and public via televoting/ First Semi-final of New Proposal)
• 13/03/2025- Third Night– (12 BIG Category will perform and will be voted by radio jury and public via televoting/ Second Semi.final New Proposal)
• 14/03/2025- Fourth Serata– (Covers Night/New Proposal Final)
• 15/03/2025- Fifth Serata– (Campioni Grand Final)

A total of 24 acts will compete in the Campioni Category, the winner of the competition will be determined on Saturday 15 February 2025.

Carlo Conti will be the artistic director and host of Sanremo 2025.

Several changes have been introduced for the 2025 Sanremo edition: the New Proposals category returns to the competition with 4 acts battling for the trophy, the Covers Night results will not influence the winner of the competition in the Grand Final,

RAI’s official press release reads:

Carlo Conti, in his capacity as artistic director and host, starts again from four after his 3 winning Festivals (2015/2016/2017 editions).The Regulations of the 75th edition of the Sanremo Italian Song Festival – which will be broadcast live on Rai 1, from 11 to 15 February 2025 – are online from today, Tuesday 20 August.

These are the main new features of the Conti-branded Festival:the return of the New Proposals: 4 competing artists who will compete for the title; 24 is the number of Bigs; the voting of the “Cover” evening (in which the competing Champions will be asked to re-interpret a song chosen from the Italian or international repertoire) will not influence the final victory of the Festival, determining only the winning Cover;on the final evening, when voting on the 5 finalists will reopen, the votes obtained by the 5 singers up to that point will not be reset, but the last voting session will be added to those obtained during the previous evenings (excluding only the Cover evening); the Radio Jury has been confirmed.  

Moving on to the analysis of the individual evenings, in the first (on Tuesday) the 24 Champions in the competition will perform and the songs will be voted on by the Press Room, TV and Web Jury.  

During the second evening (on Wednesday) 12 Champions will perform, who will be voted on by the public – through Televoting – and by the Radio Jury, each with a weight of 50%. 

For the New Proposals, 2 artists will compete in a first semi-final, judged instead by the public with Televoting, by the Press Room, TV and Web Jury and by the Radio Jury, thus determining the first finalist.

The mechanism and development of the third evening (Thursday) will be identical, where the second semifinal will also take place between the other 2 New Proposals, thus identifying the second “young finalist”.

The fourth evening (Friday) will be dedicated to “Cover”: the competing singers, accompanied by a Guest artist, will re-interpret a published song, taken from the Italian and international repertoire. The covers will be evaluated by all three juries: Public Televoting, Press Room Jury, TV and Web and Radio Jury. The three voting systems will have a percentage weight of 34, 33 and 33% respectively, giving rise to an independent ranking of the Evening of the 24 Artists. The first classified will be the winner of the Evening of the Covers.

Also on the fourth evening, the final for the New Proposals category will take place between the two contenders who qualified in the previous evenings. The 2 songs/artists will be voted by the public with Televoting, by the Jury of the Press Room, TV and Web and by the Radio Jury, always with a weight of 34, 33 and 33% respectively on the overall result of the vote.

In the final of the fifth evening (on Saturday), the 24 competing songs will first be performed again, which will be voted on by the 3 Juries once again with a weight of Televoting 34%, Press Room, TV and Web Jury 33 and Radio Jury 33%.  The result of this vote will be added to that of the votes in the First Evening and to the joint result of the votes in the Second and Third Evening, in order to determine an average percentage of the votes and therefore a ranking of the 24 competing songs/Artists. The songs/Artists in the first 5 positions in the ranking will be communicated without order of placement.

After that, the 5 finalist songs will be re-proposed and a new vote – with the same methods for the three Juries. The result of this new vote in the Evening will be added to the overall result of the previous votes (First Evening, Second and Third Evening, Fifth Evening), as resulting in the partial general ranking drawn up in the Evening, in order to determine a new average percentage of the votes referred to the 5 songs/Artists and therefore a final ranking of the same 5 songs/Artists, so as to crown the winner of the 75th edition of the Italian Song Festival.

These are some of the most important innovations in the rules of Carlo Conti, which does not change its philosophy: music, songs at the center of the show and the search for talent, in a dynamic and entertaining television show.  The slogan of Carlo’s festivals remains the same: EVERYONE SINGS SANREMO!

Source: RAI
Photo credit: RAI