A coveted honour among the cities in Swedish: the chance to host a show that’s part of the annual Melodifestival tour through Sweden! The final is traditionally in the capital city of Stockholm, but that means the 4 deltävlingar (semi-finals) + Andra Chansen (the Second Chance round) are up for grabs and many Swedish cities see it as a great honour to get to be host to one of those shows and let it take place in an arena in their city.
Today, Swedish broadcaster SVT has published which cities they will be visiting during Melodifestivalen 2018 and the schedual looks as following (the date between brackets):
- Deltävling 1 (3-2): Karlstad (Löfbergs Arena)
- Deltävling 2 (10-2): Göteborg (Scandinavium)
- Deltävling 3 (17-2): Malmö (Malmö Arena)
- Deltävling 4 (24-2): Örnsköldsvik (Fjällräven Center)
- Andra Chansen (3-3): Kristianstad (Kristianstad Arena)
- Final (10-3): Stockholm (Friends Arena)
The arena of the second deltävling is a famous one, the same one that hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1985. Yes, the one where host Lill Lindfors ”lost” part of her dress only to reveal a ”new” one by unfolding the top part of what she still had one: it was all part of the plan!
Despite Melodifestivalen being on tour for 15 years now, there are still newcomers among the hosting cities sometimes, as is the case this year with Andra Chansen’s hosting city: Kristianstad. About that, Anette Helenius, project leader for Melodifestivalen says:
It’s incredibly nice that after over 15 years of being on tour, we still get the chance to visit new cities, like this year with Kristianstad.
Melodifestivalen 2018 will be delivering the artist and song to be Sweden’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal.
