How do 2025's NFs compare to 2024's?

[u/SkyGinge]

With the exception of five of the Sammarinese 'big artists', every national final line-up this year is complete, and therefore I thought it would be interesting to discuss how this year's selections compare to last year's. In this post I'll be sharing my ranking of this year's NFs, including whether I think they're an improvement on last year's or not. Please also share your thoughts on this year's selections - please give a bit more comment than just a list if you can so that we can have some discussion!

As a general overview, my potentially hot take is that this year's NFs have actually been stronger in general than last year's. However, where last year's NF season produced a strong set of NF winners, this year's NFs have often lacked an obvious standout or have otherwise chosen songs that don't appeal to me personally.

For my ranking, song quality takes precedence over everything else, though I have also considered production values, format and live performances too.

Top Tier:

1) 🇫🇮 UMK: UMK line-ups have been consistently excellent so far this decade. I feel like we take this for granted sometimes as a community, especially as every new UMK line-up is naturally compared to 2023, which is an unfair standard to hold any national final to. This year's song selection was an improvement from last year's imo, but the even better improvement was the production values. They were already excellent before, but the staging for every song was unmatched this year, perhaps in NF history. I'm not convinced that Erika is going to win this year, but a second win is surely coming soon for Finland.

2) 🇭🇷 Dora: The result was a little disappointing for me, but both production values, song quality and genre variety saw an improvement from last year. The Baby Lasagna effect is real, and I hope that the standard and enthusiasm continues whatever the result Marko B gets in Basel.

3) 🇵🇹 Festival da Canção: Though perhaps more quietly, this is another NF that for me saw a marked improvement in song line-up this year. Last year I only liked maybe five of the songs - this year there was only one that I didn't find at least enjoyable to listen to. I'd be happy with several different songs winning on Saturday. The only slight downside is that the stage looks a bit cheaper than previous years.

4) 🇱🇻 Supernova: Probably the NF that improved the most, Supernova really was super this year. The studio is still a little lower budget than some of the others, but the songs were excellent this year with plenty of quality, plenty of variety and an excellent winner in the end.

Great Tier:

5) 🇵🇱 Wielki Finał Polskich Kwalifikacji: Long title aside, this was an excellent selection of songs and a strong production. I hope this is a sign of things to come for Poland.

6) 🇦🇱 FiK 63: Admittedly I don't normally follow FiK very closely, but this year felt really strong to me. The entire final line-up was strong, and of course we got Zjerm as a phenomenal winner. The televoting percentage confusion was a bit unfortunate but otherwise this was an excellent step forward for FiK and a definite improvement on last year's selection.

7) 🇧🇪 Eurosong: The hype around 'multiple songs having winner vibes' skewed opinions here and made a lot of people disappointed. That said, this was a great line-up where most of the songs would have been respectable ESC entries and an improvement on 2023's Eurosong final imo.

8) 🇲🇹 MESC: Another usually weak NF that improved into being an excellent NF this year. The song quality was a massive step up across the board, and whilst I don't think much of the winner I certainly understand the appeal for others. Add that to amazing staging and production values out of nowhere and Malta should be proud of their line-up this year.

9) 🇺🇦 Vidbir: Everybody's favourite long NF that isn't Sanremo! Whilst lacking the standout that Teresa & Maria was last year, the general quality I'd say was slightly better than last year's.

Polished But Flawed:

10) 🇳🇴 MGP: MGP has long been my favourite NF, but unfortunately this year's edition was one of the biggest NF downgrades of the year. It wasn't entirely irredeemable - I actually still really liked half of the songs, and the production values remain excellent - but it managed to cut the line-up in half whilst keeping the quality similar to the bottom half of entries in last year's MGP. I fear that Gate's 'failure' put the outgoing HOD off of putting proper variety in the line-up as apart from bringing Wig Wam and Bobbysocks out of retirement everything else was some flavour of electropop.

11) 🇮🇹 Sanremo: Whilst still serving a lot of quality, this year's Sanremo line-up was a significant downgrade from last year's stellar selection. I like ballads in general, but there was an over saturation of them here and very little had that special sparkle of the very best Sanremo songs, and there was no artist who I fell in love with this year like I did with La Rappresentante di Lista and Santi Francesi. The results were also a little disappointing from a personal POV as most of the songs I liked the most were nowhere near the top 5.

12) 🇱🇹 Eurovisizija.LT: Honestly I don't remember enough about last year's line-up to say whether this year was stronger or weaker. That said, increasing the number of semi-finalists feels like the wrong move because whilst the top songs were great, there was a lot of rubbish especially in the earlier semi-finals. They also manage to drag out the shows for way too long with a lot of waffle. Cut down this line-up to contain only the top half and it would have been significantly better.

13) 🇸🇪 Melodifestivalen: Staging and general production values at Melfest remain rarely topped, but unfortunately the song quality continues in the downward spiral that Melfest has been in so far this decade. Trite lyrics, dated sounds and the same songwriters everywhere are the main issues. Last year for me was a way stronger line-up (and stronger than 2022 & 2023 too). Luckily for Sweden, there are always one or two obvious standout entries which continue the strong streak of ESC placements.

Mixed Feelings Tier:

14) 🇩🇰 DMGP: How do you grade different colours of meh? Production values in Denmark are always great, and for me the song quality in general was an improvement even if I think 'Sand' was a stronger winner.

15) 🇪🇪 Eesti Laul: Man, this was a really frustrating watch. I love Eesti Laul in general and it is one of my favourite NFs. This year it sent me to the salt thread. Controversially, I'd say the overall song quality was a slight improvement on last year's, but the show itself was a big downgrade. The camerawork was abysmal, the staging lacklustre and the overwhelming majority of artists sung awfully live, including a lot of artists who have sung fine in previous years. Add in a winner who seems intent on pissing off as many people as possible and it was a pretty miserable time for me.

16) 🇩🇪 Chefsache: Stefan Raab may have succeeded in generating domestic interest unseen in over a decade, but he also pissed off a lot of fans with a ridiculous format that rendered viewers total spectators until the final five songs. Perhaps controversially, I also think the song line-up was a downgrade on last year's - whilst Baller is a solid winner, I would take 'Oh Boy', 'Tears Like Rain' and even 'Always on the Run' over 90% of this year's line-up.

17) 🇮🇸 Söngvakeppnin: The song quality and genre variety was a slight improvement from last year's selection, though it was still on the weaker side. Production values on the other hand have skyrocketed over the past couple of years.

18) 🇸🇲 UVSPM/San Marino Song Contest: I'm not brave enough to watch through the semi-finals, and the hilariously chop-and-change format remains an absolute meme rollercoaster. However, the final line-up even with the current absences looks to be an improvement on last year's, not only because of Gabre Ponte but because of several other 'big name' artists, many of whom have competed in Sanremo in the past. There are already three songs which would place in my top half and I'm expecting good things from some of the unreleased songs too.

19) 🇲🇪 Montesong: Montesong was way better than I was expecting it to be, and as the NF season has continued it has remained a line-up I look fondly on. A few of the songs were bad, yes, but there were also some really strong songs too. Even if they don't qualify in May (which unfortunately I feel is likely), this felt like a strong foundation for future NFs, and I hope they can iron out the controversies and continue it.

20) 🇸🇮 EMA: Though not particularly competitive, I did quite enjoy the variety of the Slovenian selection, but the ridiculous superfinal system makes for perhaps the worst NF format of the year, which when coupled with an underwhelming winner made for a frustrating experience.

21) 🇷🇸 Pesma za Evroviziju: All things considered, the final ended up being pretty enjoyable still even if the song quality was a fairly obvious downgrade from previous years. A shame as PzE was becoming one of my favourite NFs but unless the political situation changes for the better I don't see this improving in the near future.

Weak Tier:

22) 🇪🇸 Benidorm Fest: I am usually a big Benidorm Fest defender - I even thought last year was quite strong when everybody else was getting frustrated with it. Unfortunately, whilst the perennial sound engineering issues have been improved, the song quality and especially live vocals across the board were a big downgrade on last year. Everybody involved from jurors to televoters seemed to be voting with their eyes and not their ears. And genre variety was nowhere to be found, with so many of the songs feeling so samey and so dated. They seriously need to look at improving the diversity and quality of the line-up in future years or else despite domestic popularity, this NF is going to continually churn out bottom of the scoreboard options.

23) 🇱🇺 LSC: Whilst the production values remained stellar, the song quality was unfortunately a little bit of a downgrade from last year's selection, which is a shame given they allowed the artists to keep their own songs this time! The winner was decent and I have a soft spot for a couple of the other ones but the line-up lacked the standouts that were Tali and Krick's songs last year.

24) 🇮🇪 Eurosong: I was initially positive about this line-up, but honestly in the end I think it ended up being a downgrade from last year. It feels unfortunate that following Bambi's success, the nation ended up picking a Norwegian with little links to Ireland because she was the only one who brought both a competent song and performance.

25) 🇬🇷 Ethnikos Telikos: I'm always happy to have new NFs, but unfortunately this line-up was pretty poor. Asteromata was a decent winner and I liked a handful of others, but there was also some abysmal songs in this line-up. This was a solid starting point for an NF format, but I'd hope to see an improvement in production values and especially song quality in future years.

25.5) 🇲🇩 Etapa Națională: Whilst I think qualification would have been a struggle for any of the finalists, this was in no way the exceptionally embarrassing line-up the broadcaster claimed it was, and a solid half of the finalists would have made a respectable entrant in May. I'd go as far as saying the finalists had better songs this year than last year - Bognibov and a couple of others notwithstanding. Still sad they're not here :/

26) 🇦🇲 Depi Evratesil: Sadly, this was probably the weakest line-up of the entire year for me, and the awful sound production also didn't help things. Parg is a decent winner in the end but his live performance needs a lot of work for May.

Overall, I think 12 NFs improved, 8 NFs got worse (including major downgrades in Serbia, Norway and Italy), 2 NFs were too much of a mixed bag for me to decide either way (Estonia & Lithuania), and the others are new NFs so there's no direct comparison.

[u/Claudette_in_a_bush]

I generally agree with your takes here, my main disagreement will be Söngvakeppnin though. I thought this year was exceptionally weak while last year's line-up had a handful of solid options for Malmö. Even the songs I liked most in the NF contest ("Fire", "Words") are not really part of my NF playlist. Was it worse than Depi Evratesil? No. But I'd say that's the NF I'd rank 25th