Plans for the 73rd edition of the prestigious Festival di Sanremo are well underway, and today Italian broadcaster RAI has revealed the rules and some information that will govern the 2023 edition of the Italian music festival. (For the full rules, in Italian, click here)
This will be Amadeus’ fourth time hosting the Festival, which will take place from the 7th to the 11th of February 2023. He will also retain his title as Sanremo’s Artistic Director for the fourth time, and he is already hard at work, some eight months before the start of the Festival! As part of a media release, Amadeus said;
“The goal is to have a longer preparation time available to transfer an exciting story of today’s Italian music from the stage of the Ariston to the viewers’ homes, giving voice to new talents and already established artists. […] The line-up [of artists] will be chosen, as always, giving weight to the value of the songs and their potential […] with particular attention to their radio appeal.”
Sanremo 2023 will again feature 25 established artists, including the three finalists of the junior edition of Sanremo, “Sanremo Giovani”. These three artists will have to compete with a different song than the ones they will sing at the Junior Festival in December. The night of covers will be on the fourth night (Friday the 10th of February), and this year the 25 artists will get to choose a song that was released between 1960 and 1999. Artists can choose a guest singer to accompany them, approved by Amadeus. There will be a special prize given to the winner of the Covers evening.
New this year is a guarantee that the winner of the Festival di Sanremo will automatically participate at Eurovision 2023. In previous years, the rules stated that the winner would have the first right of refusal to attend Eurovision. Since Italy’s return in 2011, this has happened. In 2016, Stadio won Sanremo, but declined to participate at Eurovision in Stockholm, so runner-up Francesca Michielin participated instead. All 25 artists will be judged by three groups: the TV viewers at home who can vote by landlines and mobile phones, the press room (made up of 150 accredited journalists), and the demoscopic jury (made up of a wide-range of 300 Italians).
On the first and second evenings (Tuesday the 7th and Wednesday the 8th of February), only the press room will vote. This is done because half of the artists will sing on Tuesday, and the other half go on Wednesday. Their vote will be split three ways: a third for TV media, a third for print media, and a third for online media. Then, on the third evening (Thursday the 9th of February), the voting shifts to the TV viewers and the demoscopic jury, each having 50% of the vote.
To determine the winner of the Covers on Friday night and the Festival winner on Saturday night, the voting will be divided into three parts: 33% for the demoscopic jury, 33% for the press room, and 34% for the televoting. As always, on Saturday night, we will see the final ranking of all the voting for places 25 to 4, and then there will be a final and decisive vote for the winner from the Top 3 remaining.
Are you looking forward to Sanremo 2023? Let us know your expectations for Amadeus and his team going into the Festival below, or on our social media @escbubble !
