We informed you earlier today that SVT has revealed the eight jury countries which will be the ones to cast their votes in the final of Melodifestivalen 2021. It has been decided that the jury of Belaurus has been replaced by the jury of United Kingdom. Now new information has came in and the Belarusian jury has been replaced with a jury from United Kingdom. And the new lineup is as follows

• Albania
• Cyprus
• France
• Iceland
• Israel
• The Netherlands
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom

When they decided to have Belarus they were faced with the strong critiques and the following statement was made by Karin Gunnarsson the producer of Melodifestivalen to Kulturnytt for Swedish radio:

“We look at geographical spread and experiences of the competition. People who lead the jury group in Belarus have extensive experience of the competition and a solid competence in the field. I understand that our choice of Belarus can be questioned as the situation in the country is extremely worrying. The basis of the ESC is broad inclusion and it must be possible to meet beyond the participating countries. The event is apolitical and we do not take a stand by having them as a jury group ”.

But later during the day SVT decided to replace the jury of Belarus with the one from the UK stating the following:

It was a wrong decision that we selected Belarus as part of the international jury. The situation for free media is very serious in the country. We have therefore chosen to replace the jury group from Belarus with a jury group from the UK,

Karin Gunnarsson, Melodifestivalen producer

 

The other 50% of the votes are going to come from the viewers – they are going to be divided into seven age groups through app voting, and the eight group will be the votes received by phone calls. The age groups are:

• 3-9 years old
• 10-15 years old
• 16-29 years old
• 30-44 years old
• 45-59 years old
• 60-74 years old
• older than 75

Each jury and each televoting age group/telephone voting, will give out points for the 10 favorites Eurovision style, and thus both the juries and the public are going to give out 464 points each. In case of a tie, the song which received more points from the public will win. In case of a tie with the points as well, the one who scored more televotes in general will be the winner.

Which of the 12 finalists are YOUR personal favorites? Let us know by voting in our poll right here: