Lithuania: LRT will determine its Eurovision 2021 representative through a national selection
The Lithuanian national broadcaster, LRT, has decided to determine next year’s Eurovision representative by holding a national selection, in which The Roop, this year’s Eurovision act will have a place directly to the finals.
The LRT Eurovision Working Group has decided Lithuania to be represented in next year’s Eurovision by the winner of a national selection to be held next year, while The Roop will have a reserved place in the finals. LRT will also transfer to The Roop all the funds earned during this year’s national selection via voice and text message votes – a total of almost $ 20.3 thousand. euros.
Following the cancellation of Eurovision due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the competing countries have to decide how their representatives are selected for next year’s contest. Eurovision organizers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), has cleared stated that the rules of the competition will not be changed, so the songs selected this year will not be eligible for Eurovision next year but only songs released after September 1, 2020.
The Roop stated after this decision:
We are all saddened by this situation – the song On Fire was considered one of the main contenders to win the competition. We have received a lot of sympathy both in Lithuania and abroad, but unfortunately we will not be able to appear on the big stage of Eurovision.
Gytis Oganauskas, Deputy Director General of the LRT .
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 the Eurovision
This year The Rood had won the national final with their song “On fire” but never made it to the Eurovision stage after the Eurovision 2020 cancellation due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Source: LRT
Cover photo: J. Stacevicius/LRT