Season 18

The **RSC18** was the **18th** edition of the discord contest Regions Song Contest. The contest took place in the city of Mariehamn,  Åland Islands, Finland  after  **Åland Islands**'s win in Season 17 with the song “Idiot”.

It was the **second** time Finland  had hosted the contest. This seventeenth season consisted of one pre-qualification round held on June 01st, two semi-finals held on June 08th & 10th, and the grand final on June 26, 2021.

All the live shows were hosted on YouTube as well as presented on the Discord server. Fifty-Six entries took part in the **eighteenth** season of the contest. Each region had to compete with one song.

The Top 05 juries of the seventeenth edition was part of the **Big 05** and so on, was automatically qualified for the Grand Final.

Starting from this season, it was decided that the juries that reached the top 05 in the previous season **(excluding the host region)** could change their region to another one of the same country, instead of forcefully keeping the same region. This new rule was executed due to numerous weak results of previous Big 05 songs, and regions often having to send the same artist as they couldn't send any other artist related to the region.

The Big 05 regions were :

* **Åland Islands- Host Region**
* Georgia
* Ohio
* San Juan (replacing  Guayama)
* Berlin (replacing  Lower Saxony)

The winner was **Chukotka** in  **Russia** with the song **"Источник"** performed by **Polnalyubvi**, with **262** points.

## Participating Regions

**Debuting Regions -**  Agder,  Baja California,  Chukotka,  Guayas,  Hunan,  Kampala,  Kerala,  Makkah,  Montegiardino,  North,  Oran,  Réunion,  Småland,  Southwestern,  Tartumaa,  Western

## Venue

### Host City

After  Åland Islands's win in Palermo, the  alandic delegation subsequently announced that the **18th** season would be hosted in **Mariehamn**, the capital and largest city of  Åland Islands. **Mariehamn** is the capital of the  Åland Islands, an autonomous territory under  Finnish sovereignty. Mariehamn is the seat of the Government and Parliament of Åland, and **40% of the population** (11,718) of Åland live in the city. It is mostly surrounded by Jomala, the second largest municipality in Åland in terms of population; to the east it is bordered by Lemland. Like all of Åland, Mariehamn is unilingually Swedish-speaking and around 88% of the inhabitants speak it as their native language.

### Arena

As Mariehamn has no indoor venue to host the contest, it was decided that the contest would be hosted in the **Wiklöf Holding Arena**, which would be adapted to the contest's needs for hosting. Indoor needs would be hosted in **Alandica**, just a few minutes away from the arena. The **Wiklöf Holding Arena** is a multi-purpose stadium in Mariehamn,  Finland. It is used mostly for football matches and is the home ground of IFK Mariehamn. The stadium has a capacity of 1635 people and was built in 1932. Therefore, the hosting capabilities of the arena were extended to 10,000 for the contest.

### Hosts

The hosts of the **18th** edition were :

* **Ilta**,  Finnish- German singer and songwriter who became known after being featured in Cheek's song "Sillat" in 2015. She participated in the 2021 Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu with the single "Kelle Mä Soitan" as well in the third Regions Song Contest, where she ended 19th in final with "Minne Mä Meen", representing  Uusimaa.
* **Robin Packalen** is a  Finnish singer who started as a teen pop artist. He represented his native  Southwest Region in the 17th Regions Song Contest, and ended 09th in the final.