The Finnish broadcaster YLE has announced, that UMK 2021 will be host by a Finnish pop star Antti Tuisku. This is the first time Tuisku will host a live TV show. Earlier he has told that hosting is not his thing, although he has been asked in different kind of hosting tasks. ”Now when it’s a year of celebration and one-time special thing, I had the courage to accept the challenge”, tells Tuisku to YLE. In 2021 UMK is held for the 10th time, so this year is a year of celebration to UMK.

Tuisku will not only host UMK 2021, but he also has more than one music performance on UMK stage. Although Tuisku tells that it will be hard to fill the boots of Krista Siegfrids, who has hosted the show since 2016, he doesn’t feel too much pressure, since he has started rehearsing his performances already in November. ”My shows will not be less than anything or anyone”, Tuisku promises.

Antti Tuisku is one of the most popular Finnish artists, whose career started already in 2004, when he finished 3rd in the first season of the Finnish Idol, when the winner of the contest was the Finnish Eurovision representative 2007 Hanna Pakarinen. Many Finns have hoped that Tuisku would enter UMK some year. Partly because of this Tuisku said yes to hosting UMK this year. ”I’m really not saying that I could never apply to Eurovision as an artist. But it has to happen in a year when I could focus in it completely and it would be the most important thing in that moment”, tells Tuisku. 

UMK 2021 will take place in February 20th 2021 in Tampere, Finland. Even though this is the first time Antti Tuisku will host UMK, it’s not his first time on UMK stage. Many of us still remembers his interval act in UMK 2015: