On 28 December 2010, IBA opened the public application with the deadline on 25 January 2011. IBA also directly invited artists to participate in the competition. Artists that applied for the competition were then required to submit two to three songs each and ten entries were chosen by a special committee consisting of music industry professionals and members from IBA and announced on 8 February 2011. Among the competing artists was the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1998, Dana International. The members of the committee were Yaakov Naveh (IBA artists representative), Yoav Ginai (entertainment director of IBA), Noam Gil-Or (director of Reshet Gimmel), Yuval Ganor (director of 88FM), Rina Hachmon ("Kdam Eurovision" producer), Idit Ben Eliyahu (producer of the Channel 1 programme "Local Noise"), Yossi Gispan (lyricist), David Krivoshei (musician), Izhar Cohen (winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1978), Gilad Segev (musician) and Tal Barnea (former EBU project manager). The competing songs were presented during a press conference together with the running order on 28 February 2011 held at the Shablul Jazz Club in Tel Aviv and hosted by Shiri Maimon and Aki Avni.