The Netherlands at Instaglobal Song Contest 12

The Netherlands participated in the twelfth edition of Instaglobal for the 12th time. The country held for the second time in a row a national selection to determine their entry for the contest, held in Bulgaria. Broadcaster AVROTROS was responsible for the Dutch entry. The winners were Eva Simons and Sidney Samson with the song "Bludfire". They came to the wildcard round, but failed to get the wildcard. This meant that it was the first time ever that the Netherlands were absent at the final of the Instaglobal Song Contest.

After a succesfull 5th place last edition by Martin Garrix & Bebe Rexha, the Dutch delegation held another Nederlands Songfestival. This time, it had to be a big liveshow with many songs and an international jury. The delegation still wanted to hold on the new formula to select famous artists for this, since this seemed to work out really well after last edition.

## Nederlands Songfestival II

### Format

As said above, AVROTROS wanted to expand the selection. Ten songs were selected to perform at the selection, which was held in the capital Amsterdam. All the ten entries would perform live and after their performances the Dutch public and 21 international delegations could vote for their favourite. The entry with the most points would be crowned the winner and will represent the Netherlands in Burgas, Bulgaria.

### Participants

Among the entries was Anouk, who participated in Nederlands Songfestival I as well and came there 2nd. Eva Simons also returned after already participating in Instaglobal 4 and Instaglobal 7. At the latter, she got with Sidney Samson the best result for the Netherlands so far at Instaglobal (4th). Sidney Samson accompanied Eva again this selection. Rochelle had two songs in the selection: one solo and one with DJ duo Dirtcaps.

Next to (mainly) dance songs, AVROTROS also opened the door for (pop)rock songs from famous bands like MakeBelieve and Kensington. Also famous group Chef'Special joined the competition.

### Voting

The voting went like the Instaglobal rules: each international (Instaglobal) delegation would rank all the ten songs from 1 (best) to 10 (worst). The best get 12 points, their second place 10 and then the places 3 to 10 the points 8 to 1.

Each country was called up at the end of the voting period, when a spokesperson (anonymous) gave the points of their jury. The countries were called up in Dutch. In between (as 15th out of the 22 voting countries), the Netherlands were called up to give their points. These were the points of the Dutch televoting, whereas the other points were from international juries.

The voting went very exciting. Even though Eva & Sidney were on the lead from a long time, they were threathened to loose this position until the end by the artists that all placed 2-5 (MakeBelieve, Dirtcaps & Rochelle, Kensington and Anouk). At the end of the voting, there was only a margin of 7 points between the 1st and the 3rd place.

### Results

#### Voting by country:

*Countries 1-11:* Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan.

*Countries 12-22:* Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United States.

## At Instaglobal

Eva Simons and Sidney Samson had to perform in the second semi-final on the 3rd spot, after Japan and before Malaysia. With 67 points the duo came on an 8th place, 2 points too short to qualify directly. Eva and Sidney got a spot in the wildcard round instead. There, they had to face September & Maria Olafs from Iceland and Xenia Ghali from Greece. As expected, the Icelandic entry won the wildcard round with 57,1% of the votes. With 25% Eva and Sidney came second, not enough to get the wildcard for the final.

### Points awarded to the Netherlands

Semi-final
* South Africa
 * Denmark
* Malta
* Canada
* FYR Macedonia
* United States

### At Second Chance

Due to the bad result of Anouk in the first edition, the Netherlands stayed home for Instaglobal Second Chance.