With the start of a new month, Latvia has decided to announce their participation for the upcoming contest, which is to be held in Austria. Not only have they announced their attendance, but also announced the opening period for song submissions. The national final in Latvia – “Supernova” – will also undergo a few format changes.
Supernova 2026
With the recent success for Latvia at the Eurovision Song Contest, with back-to-back qualification, the Latvians are gearing up to bring back home another positive result for the Baltic country. Most noticeable, would be that Latvian broadcaster (LSM) will now host two semi-finals, instead of only one. However, the rules do state, that they have to right to lower the amount if needed.
For now, the plan looks as follows:
- Song submission open from: August 1st to October 1st 2025
- Qualified acts to be announced in November
- Two semi-finals to take place on January 31st 2026 and February 7th 2026
- Final to take place on February 14th 2026
It is not stated exactly, how many entries will be selected to participate in the Supernova semi-finals. The amount of participants for the Latvian national final has varied in the past couple of years. For 2025, originally, 20 acts were selected to compete, but one had to withdrew prior to the semi-final, which just saw the 19 finalists perform.
A total of either 10 or 11 acts will compete in the Supernova final. It has been stated that the Latvian broadcaster will be able to invite one non-qualifier from the semi-finals, to compete in the final, is they wish.
A specialized jury, will decide the acts that will compete in the national selection, but it will be up to both jury and televote to decide the winner of the national final, as well as the qualifiers for the final. In case of a tie in points, the televote favorite will be prioritized.
Otherwise, most rules are as they usually are, with performers being at least 16 years old, songs can not be longer than 3 minutes, only 6 performers at most allowed on stage, and some more specific ones regarding Latvian citizens and non-citizens taking part.
Further details regarding rules and conditions can be found here.
2025 saw Latvia being represented by Tautumeitas, who performed their song “Bur Man Laimi“. Thier harmonic voices managed to qualify Latvia to the final in Basel, Switzerland, marking the first time ever that the Latvian language has ever been performed in the final and only the second time ever, that Latvia has performed a song fully in Latvian. In the end, the group managed to gather a total of 158 points, which brought them up to a 13th place in the final.
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Source(s): LSM.lv (In Latvian)
