The Icelandic submissions have been open for roughly a day now and will continue to be so until the 20th of October, which gives not only the Icelandic songwriters some time to submit their songs but also the foreign ones, who are allowed as long as 2/3 of the composers and 1/2 of the lyricists featured on the entry are by people who have either Icelandic citizenship or have the status of permanent resident in Iceland.

Out of those entries, broadcaster RÚV will choose 12 songs to compete, equally divided over the two semi-finals on February 10 and 17. Three will make it to the final on March 3 + an extra song via a wildcard given by a special jury to one of the songs that didn’t make it to the final initially.

RÚV adds that they are looking for all kinds of songs, different styles by different composers, as they are looking to celebrate diversity and that’s not all: they have tripled the prize money that will belong to the winning songwriters of Söngvakeppnin 2018. They’ve raised the prize money from 1 million Icelandic kroná to 3 million, which would be € 23.662,49 at the time of writing!

It seems that instead of feeling defeated after three consecutive non-qualifications, RÚV is only putting more effort into doing well at the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Lisbon!