Tampere is gearing up for UMK 2025 on February 8th.
The Finnish broadcaster has confirmed that the 2025 edition of UMK will be taking place at Nokia Arena in Tampere, Southern Finland, on February 8th. As per usual, we will see seven acts competing to become Finland’s Eurovision 2025 representative.
As we have seen in previous years, a UMK pre-party has also been planned for the evening for the evening of the show, as well as an after party until 3am EET. Tickets for the UMK final go on sale on Thursday 3rd October at 08:00 CET, and can be purchased here.
The seven artists competing in UMK 2025 will be revealed on Wednesday 8th January. The songs (plus accompanying music videos) that the acts will be competing with will be released between 9th and 17th January, with one song and music video being released at a time.
UMK: from humble beginnings to sell out arenas
In more recent years, UMK has grown in many ways. It has been drawing in high viewing figures in Finland and abroad, with it cementing itself as one of most popular national finals among Eurovision fans across Europe. This year, UMK was watched by over 20,000 people inside Nokia Arena, with a further 1.9 million tuning in at home, and almost one million more from outside of Finland.
In more recent years, UMK has gone on to become a cornerstone of the Finnish music industry, attracting big names in the Finnish music scene, including: The Rasmus; Portion Boys; Erika Vikman; Danny and Robin Packalen, among many others. And this year is no exception.
The broadcaster has revealed a record number of songs have been submitted for UMK 2025 – 485 songs in total. One reason for this could be the change in the selection process. In addition to the professional jury (consisting of music industry professionals, chaired by YleX’s Head of Music Tapio Hakanen), there were also five audience juries that were invited to select artists and songs for UMK 2025.
UMK’s Executive Producer Anssi Autio, is aware of the scale of UMK now, and has high expectations for the 2025 edition:
“The UMK show, which has grown into an arena-scale event, exceeded expectations in many respects last year. There are high expectations for this year’s event, both among the UMK production team and certainly among the audience. Tampere proved to be a brilliant UMK host city last year. This year, we will be working even more closely with the city, which is expected to have a very boisterous UMK week in early February.”
Finland are currently on a four year qualification streak, which has brought them mixed results. In 2021, Blind Chanel finished in 6th place in the final, and got Finland their first score over 300 points. In 2023, Käärijä went on to win the televote with the joint second highest televote score ever in Eurovision (376 points) and finished in second place overall, just 47 points behind Loreen.
In 2022 and 2024, The Rasmus and Windows95Man both qualified in 7th place and both achieved 38 points in the final, finishing in 21st and 19th place respectively. Will Finland’s Eurovision 2025 representative be able to continue the country’s qualification streak?
Eurovision 2025 will be returning to Switzerland for the first time since 1989, after Nemo secured the country’s third Eurovision win this year with their song “The Code”. The contest will be coming to St Jakobshalle in Basel from May 13th to 17th.
Are you excited for UMK 2025? Which Finnish artists would you like to see participating in next years show? Let us know your artist wishlist in the comments below!
Photo: Alma Bengtsson / EBU
