Croatian broadcaster HRT has made an official statement confirming that Dora 2021 will be used to determine their representative at Eurovision Song Contest next year. Dora 2021 will be held in Opatija next February as it was initially planned after they contract between the city of Opatija, Opatija festival and HRT was signed that the festival will take place in both 2020 and 2021. Croatian Head of Delegation, Uršula Tolj will be in charge of Dora 2021. Croatia joins Denmark, Estonia, France, Finland, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden who have announced earlier that they plan to organize their national selections for Eurovision next year.

HRT is very grateful and thankful to Damir for his dedication and hard work during the 2020 Eurovision season despite the cacellation of the event and they made a statement:

“Together, we got the most out of this year without the standard Eurovision Song Contest: we presented ourselves with dignity on social media, as well as in the special show Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light. Damir proved to be a great professional, and despite the situation, he did a great job of all the promotion – and the song, we can conclude without hesitation, achieved great success both in Croatia and abroad”

Regarding the whole situation Damir Kedžo shared following statement on his social media: “The whole DORA 2020 experience was a full circle. From happiness to sadness, from winning Dora to cancellation of Eurovision because of Covid 19 and at the end canceling me as a direct representative for Rotterdam 2021. Thank you everyone, my band, my girls who shared the stage with me in Opatija and a virtual one while we sang “Divlji vjetre” online to people all over Europe and the world. Huge thank you to all the people from my team and all of those who gave their hearts and souls in these few months with the intention that our song and performance is seen and heard in the best possible light. We solely wanted to represent our music and country the best way we knew. Thank you all for your support and support in the last 24 hours since we know that HRT decided to have a new competition and that i will not directly represented Croatia in Rotterdam in 2021. This roller coaster of emotions and change is not easy to survive, so thank you all once again. I’m happily waiting to go with you through everything that the future will bring us. You can expect the best possible music and emotions that I will bring to you, and I belive you will be with me. I don’t need anything else. I love you people.”

Below you can watch the performance of his song, “Divlji vjetre” which won Dora 2020.

Even though Damir has not been internally selected to represent Croatia at next years Eurovision, he can still participate at Dora 2021 in order to represent Croatia in The Netherlands next year. Dora was the selection festival for Croatian representative from 1993 until 2011 when Croatia went for internal selections after they revived it in 2019.

What do you think about the decision HRT made about their next year’s participation selection method? Let us know in the comments below and at our social media links!