Slovenia will select its entry for the 69th Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, February 1. The 12 artists competing in Slovenia's pre-selection 'EMA' for Basel 2025 have already been announced by the broadcaster RTVSLO in December. Now, the official running order and snippets of the songs have finally been revealed during the show 'EMA pred EMO'!
The 12 entries compete not just to be Slovenia’s entry for Basel 2025, but also to get the honour of being the 30th Slovenian entrant to perform in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Since 2022, RTVSLO has not chosen their Eurovision entry through a national final until EMA 2025. Raiven competed with Veronika in 2024 after being chosen internally, while Joker Out were also internally chosen to attend the contest with Carpe Diem in 2023. Both entries advanced to the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest.
From the original 114 songs that RTVSlo received, 12 acts have been selected to compete this year. Here is the official running order:
- ANNA – Čau
- ZveN – Divja
- PolarAce – Kind
- Astrid & The Scandals – Touché
- Jon Vitezič – Vse ti dam
- KiKi – O-ou!
- Eva Pavli – Niti
- Klemen – How Much Time Do We Have Left?
- July Jones – New Religion
- Žan Videc – Pusti da gori
- Trine – Grace
- RAI – Frederick’s Dead
You can listen to the snippets here
In the preliminary round, five juries, each consisting of five members, will first determine two superfinal acts, which will then be put to a vote in a second round. These include a music jury, a television jury, a radio jury, an OGAE jury from Slovenia, and an international jury of experts. In the second round, however, only the TV audience will decide who gets to represent the country in Basel.
EMA 2025 will be hosted by Raiven and Štras. Raiven performed “Veronika” as Slovenia’s representative at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest. In 2018, she also already hosted EMA. Gregor Strasbergar, better known as Štras, will be joining Raiven on stage as the 2nd host. This will be his first presenting role on RTVSLO, as Štras is usually the lead singer of MRFY.
Slovenia at Eurovision
Since its first entry in 1993, Slovenia has taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest 29 times, hosting a qualifying round (Kvalifikacija za Millstreet) in Ljubljana for seven countries because of the increasing number of new nations wanting to enter the competition. The broadcaster representing Slovenia in the contest is Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTVSLO). Slovenia has only missed the event twice, in 1994 and 2000, because of the relegation rule following a weak average score during the 1990s. Their highest achievement is the seventh place, reached two times: in 1995 with “Prisluhni mi” by Darja Švajger and in 2001 with “Energy” by Nuša Derenda. Since the semifinals were introduced in 2004, Slovenia has made it to the final eight times. As of 2024, Slovenia has not reached the top ten since securing seventh place in 2001, only achieving thirteenth place in 2002 and 2011.
