The Swiss national broadcaster is going for a completely different approach in order to find their act for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest. Instead of having a national final as it was the case since 2011, SRF went for open submissions, but the “final” was held behind closed doors, where selected fans, and international jury members could vote for their favorites.

The Swiss selection process was done in a couple of rounds – first all jury members received links to all songs via email, and in the first round they had to listen through all of the songs and score them. In the second round they received the shortlisted entries based on the results from the first round, and now they had to give their feedback on each of the songs. They watched the video clip of every of the entries, and had to express their views on how the artists and the songs came across.

In the third round, they had to judge the whole package together. They received the songs with the artists’ presentations, and they had to give an overall verdict. The jurors had a broad range of songs in different styles, but it happened various times that a particular song was sung by various artists.

SRF has now revealed the names of the 21 people who were part of the international jury helping to select the Swiss entry for 2019. We find lots of well known names in the Eurovision world, including various former Eurovision entrants. The jury was consisting of:

• Typh Barrow – singer-songwriter from Belgium, who will be one of the vocal coaches in the next season of The Voice Belgium.
• Maria Marcus – Swedish producer and songwriter, winner of multiple Platinum awards.
• Leonid Shyrin – Belarusian composer, who wrote various theme songs for TV, movies, and plays
• Mark De Lisser – internationally renowned choir director, arranger and vocal coach.
• Rennie Mirro – winner of the Golden Mask theater award in the 2005 Best Male Musical Artist category for his performance in Grease at the Göta Lejon Theater together with Pernilla Wahlgren – mother of Benjamin Ingrosso, who represented Sweden in Eurovision in Lisbon.
• Sasha Saedi – Iranian musician from Vienna, who works for Universal Music Austria as an A&R Manager.
• Alexey Gross – Belarusian singer, who took part in Eurofest three times – most recently in 2016 with “Flame”, and finishing in 5th place.
• Adrienn Zsédenyi – also known as Zséda, Hungarian singer and actress, who was one of the four jurors in A Dal – Hungary’s Eurovision selection in 2016 and 2017.
• Anders Øhrstrøm – Danish composer, music producer, sound designer, vocal coach and singer.
• Deivydas Zvonkus – Lithuanian TV music supervisor, record producer, songwriter, composer of background music for TV productions, arranger for orchestra, occasionally also a keyboardist and a comedian.
• Tinkara Kovač – Slovenian singer, who represented her country in Eurovision 2014 with “Spet (Round And Round)”.
• Grzegorz Urban – Polish pianist, and musical director for Halina Frąckowiak.
• Ovidiu Jacobsen – Musician, songwriter and producer, who represented Romania twice in Eurovision together with Paula Ovi – in 2010 with “Playing With Fire” and in 2014 with “Miracle”.
• Helga Möller – Icelandic singer, member of the band ICY – the first ever Icelandic Eurovision entrants.
• Gore Melian – Armenian singer-songwriter, and producer.
• Rafailas Karpis – Lithuanian opera singer, who was one of the members of the international jury at the 2018 German Eurovision Final.
• Danielle Spencer – Australian singer and actress.
• Ruth Lorenzo Pascual – Spanish singer, who represented her country in Eurovision 2014 with “Dancing In The Rain”, bringing her country’s last top-10 placing up-to-date.
• Argyro Christodoulidou – Cypriot composer and concert pianist.
• Gordon Groothedde – Dutch composer and music producer. 
• Henrik Johnsson – Presenter, producer and manager of various artists who took part in Melodifestivalen in the last 10 years, who was also one of the members of the international jury in the German Final in 2018.

Even though there are rumours going around that Luca Hänni has been selected as the Swiss Eurovision entrant for 2019, there are no official confirmations yet. The Swiss act for Tel Aviv will be announced in March.