The Ukrainian band, Ziferblat, will try to compete in the Eurovision national final this year as well, after ranking second last year.
Vidbir is Ukraine’s Eurovision national selection process, used to choose the country’s representative and song for the Eurovision Song Contest since 2016, when singer Jamala won the competition. Last year’s selection will likely be remembered vividly by viewers and participants, as the voting app crashed during the broadcast, forcing the Ukrainian national broadcaster to postpone the results announcement until the following day.
After 24 tense hours, the duo Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona won the selection, while the band Ziferblat missed the opportunity to perform at Eurovision 2024 in Malmö, despite being ranked first by the juries with their song “Place I Call Home”.
Ziferblat’s Eurovision Ambitions
This week, the band’s guitarist, Valentyn Leshchynskyi, was interviewed on the Vidbircast podcast. He described the experiences and confusion from that evening and revealed that the band is interested in competing again in this year’s Ukrainian Eurovision selection: “We need to change some things to do better this year if we will participate. Well, we will participate, but we didn’t write the song… yet. To be honest, we’ve written three songs and now we are sitting and deciding which one we will send to the musical producer.”
When asked by the interviewer if he feels pressure due to Ukraine’s great success in the Eurovision competition over the last twenty years, he replied: “The results are good, and yeah, it’s a big pressure. I try not to think about the finals, because we are not there, I don’t know if we will be. I just think about the national final. You know, our Vidbir is like the Champions League in football […] We have a big, big variation of artists that want to represent Ukraine in Eurovision. Eurovision in Ukraine is like a religion.”
The registration window for the Ukrainian Eurovision selection is still open, and artists interested in submitting a song to Vidbir 2025 can register on the competition website – here!
Who are Ziferblat?
Ziferblat is an alternative rock band formed in 2015, consisting of three members: twins Valentyn and Danylo Leshchynski, and Fedir Hodakov. The band applied for the 2023 Eurovision final but did not pass the preliminary screening stage. In the 2024 competition, the band advanced to the final of the selection with the song “Place I Call Home”. The band was ranked first in the juries’ votes, fourth in the public vote, and in the final scoring tally, they reached second place in the selection.
Ukraine in Eurovision 2024
Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona represented Ukraine at Eurovision 2024 with the song “Teresa & Maria.” The duo won the Ukrainian national selection “Vidbir 2024” and finished third in the Eurovision final with 453 points.
Their entry is notable for being the first since 2002 to place in the top 5 while performing second in the running order, a position traditionally considered challenging in Eurovision statistics.
Source: wiwibloggs
Eurovision 2025: This will be Ukraine’s 20th participation in the Eurovision Song Contest. Ukraine joined the competition in 2003 and has won it three times. Ukraine’s last victory was in Eurovision 2022 with the song “Stefania” performed by Kalush Orchestra.
