Festival da Canção, which is Portugal’s national selection, will return once again in 2026, as the way of method, for the country to select it’s representative for the upcoming song contest in Vienna, Austria. However, this time, there are a few new twists to the format, and the possibility that the winner might not be the one to represent the country.
Festival da Canção 2026
Portuguese national broadcaster (RTP) is aiming to try something different for 2026, and give artists various way of qualifying to the 2026 national final. There is however, a slight drop in number of participants, since it now will be 16 participants, rather than the usual 20, which has been the case the past few years.
How will the participants be selected? Well, RTP has already launched an online selection method, which will decide the first participant of the upcoming national selection. Through the “Prova de Acesso“, which translates to “Access Test”, the first partipant will be decided. Here, participants from specific music schools in Lisbon and Porto were selected, 5 from each to be exact, which were given the chance to be judged by a special jury by RTP, who then selected 5 potential candidates for an online voting.
The voting started on 16th September and is about to end already, on the 30th September 2025. This selected acts who gather the most online votes, will become the first participant of Festival da Canção 2026, but will have to participate with a new original song. The 5 candidates are:
- 1poucodesol
- Dinis Mota
- Diogo Catanho
- Polar Opposites
- Tilde
The remaining 15 participants will then be selected differently as well, whereas 8 of them, will be specially invited composers, 6 will be selected from the open application, which will last until 31st October 2025 and then the last spot in the competition will be decided by the winners of the most recent edition, which is NAPA, who went on to represent Portugal earlier this year.
The upcoming national final is open to any Portuguese citizen, whether they live in Portugal or abroad, and will have to follow certain rules in order to qualify for consideration, some of the rules include:
- Song must be no longer than 3 minutes
- No live animals are allowed on stage
- At most, only 6 people are allowed on stage during each performance
- Participants must be at least 18 years old
The national final will overall consist of two semi-finals, where 8 songs participate in each of the two semi-finals, where 5 will qualify to the final, making the final consist of 10 songs in total. The qualifiers of the semi-final will be decided by both a jury and a televote through two rounds. The 4 songs that ranks the highest in each semi-final, by the jurors, will qualify to the final, leaving the remaining songs to get the last spot, which are decided by the televote only in a second round.
The final, which will consist of 10 songs, will be decided equally by both the jury and the televote. When or where the shows will be held, and many more further details, are yet to be revealed.
As pointed out before, for 2025, Portugal was represented by the group NAPA who together brought their vibes alive on the big stage in Basel, with the song “Deslocado“. Against all odds, the group surprised Europe and competed in the final, where the ultimately finished in 21st place, with a total of 50 points from the jurors and the public vote.
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Source(s): RTP.pt (In Portuguese)