This afternoon, Moldova’s national broadcaster TRM confirmed that it will be taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest 2016.
Moldova was one of the countries that had been rather quiet at the last count but we can now count them in, particularly as details of the national selection have also been released.
The process will work in much the same way as last year, with submissions open until Monday 7 December, then two rounds of auditions (the latter of which will be streamed online on Saturday 19 December) to narrow the field down to 24.
The 24 remaining songs will compete in two semi-finals on 23 & 25 February, where 8 from each will progress to the final on Saturday 27 February. The winner will be decided by 50/50 jury and televoting.
All in all, almost identical to last year, except one significant rule change will be that the performers must be citizens of Moldova. The songwriters can still be international, however. This is an interesting development as it comes after Ukrainian Eduard Romanyuta was met with major local backlash when he won the national final, and then went on to go out at the semi-finals in Vienna.
