Russia: Channel 1 confirms participation in Eurovision 2021
The Russian national broadcaster, Channel 1 ( C1) has confirmed that it will participate in the next edition of the Eurovision Song Contest the following May in Rotterdam.
Channel 1 has confirmed to ESCToday that Russia will be present in next year’s Eurovision in the The Netherlands. However it remains unknown the format the broadcaster will use in order to determine the country’s representative, with more light to be shed on the national selection format the weeks to come.
The Eurovision Story so far
Russia took part in Eurovision for the first time in 1994 and has achieved remarkable results all the way up to date, including their first and only victory in 2008. Dima Bilan won the contest in Belgrade, Serbia with the song “Believe” and took the contest to Moscow in the following year. In 2015 and 2016, Russia finished in 2nd and 3rd place represented respectively by Polina Gagarina and Sergey Lazarev
Julia Samoylova represented Russia in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest with the song I won’t break. She was also selected to compete in the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest as a representative of Russia with the song A flame is burning, however due to some problems with the Ukrainian authorities, the country decided to withdraw before the competition. In 2019 it was time for Sergey Lazarev to make his comaback to the contest in Tel Aviv with his entry “Scream”, repaeating the same result as in 2016 , the honorable 3rd place in the grand final .
In 2020 Little Big were internally selected to represent Russia at the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam with ‘Uno‘. The pop funk group might not have had the chance to perform on the Eurovision stage in Rotterdam Ahoy as the competition was cancelled due to covid-19 , but their entry has smashed the record of the most watched music video on the official ESC Youtube channel by reaching more than 155 million views.
