Zone Song Contest 10

Final
 Venue
 Entries
 Returning
**Participation map**
* Participating countries     Did not qualify from the semi final or the PSR     Countries that participated in the past but not this edition
 System
 Winner

**Zone Song Contest 10**, often referred as **ZSC 10**, was the tenth edition of the Zone Song Contest. This edition was located in Sweden as host country. SVT was the TV station chosen by the Swedish delegation to televise and organize such important event of this dimensions for all Europe and the world after their first victory in the ninth edition with the singer *Agnes* and the song *"24 Hours"* with *525 points* in a exciting final voting where the jury and the televote agreed on their winner for the first time. Portugal got their best ever result with a second place and Italy its second best result in third place, but Sweden beated them by almost 80 points over Portugal.

The **SVT** officials ruled in a press conference on October 7, 2021 that the hosts of the first festival held in Sweden, at the Malmö Arena, were the presenter and comedian *Petra Mede* with also the comedian, presenter and actress *Sarah Dawn Finer* and her alter ego *Lynda Woodruff* who was gonna hosting the welcome ceremony to the representatives and delegations, the "*Northern Carpet Show*" a special "Red Carpet" for this edition.

The official slogan for this edition was "*Nordliga Vindar*" which means "Northern Winds" in English. The concept was inspired since it was the first festival held in Sweden and they wanted to give this edition a change of scenery to make it a little more different, special and full of new technolog since this is a very special musical edition in which 42 countries confirmed their participation, but a few days later the chains of Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro confirmed that they would return at the last moment to the festival with a total of **44** participants, the highest number in recent editions. The official logo was a nod to autumn, water and wind, being a leaf with water droplets around.

One of the things that made this edition special was the rule imposed as it was the tenth edition of the festival: All countries should sing in their own language, it could be mixed with English but the song should at least contain phrases in the language of the country. There were some complaints from parts of the Nordic countries, especially from the Norwegian delegation, which was about to withdraw as they had never sung in Norwegian, only at Old Norse and they stayed in the semi-final as a NQ country.

## Location

**Sweden** is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund Strait.
Sweden is the largest country in Northern Europe, the third-largest country in the European Union, and the fifth largest country in Europe. The capital and largest city is Stockholm. Sweden has a total population of 10.4 million; and a low population density of 25 inhabitants per square kilometre (65/sq mi). 87% of Swedes live in urban areas, which cover 1.5% of the entire land area. The highest concentration is in the central and southern half of the country.

**Malmö** is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania. It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in Scandinavia, with a population of 316,588 (municipal total 348,601 in 2021). The Malmö Metropolitan Region is home to over 700,000 people, and the Öresund region, which includes Malmö as well as Copenhagen, is home to 4 million people. Malmö is considered a gamma-level global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

### Bidding phase

The Swedish **SVT** team organized a raid for find cities who wanted to organize the festival, some cities that freed their stadiums and theaters from the Swedish National Final:*"Stjärna"* were selected, with finally Malmö being chosen on October 7, 2021 against the cities of *Gothenborg*, *Norrköping* and *Stockholm*. Stockholm was the favorite to host the event but finally couldn't be selected as it would host the Final of the Swedish National Final.

**Key**
  †  Host venue   ‡  Shortlisted venues

 Stockholm | Tele2 Arena ‡ | 33,600

## Allocation Draw

The draw to determine the allocation of the participating countries into their respective semi-finals took place on November 1 2021 at 16:00 CET, at the *Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern*  located in Stockholm. The organizing committee of the festival decided to do the first allocation draw there. As well as holding a presentation for the host city, Malmö.
The thirty-eight semi-finalists had been allocated into six pots, based on their geographical place and cultural similarities. Drawing from different pots helps to reduce the chance of so-called "bloc voting" and increase suspense in the semi-finals. The draw also determined which semi-final would be broadcast and voted by each of the six automatic finalist countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. It was also decided in which Semi-Final each member of the Big 6 should vote.

* Bosnia & Herzegovina
* Croatia
* Montenegro
* North Macedonia
* Serbia
* Slovenia
* Estonia
* Hungary
* Latvia
* Lithuania
* Poland
* Slovakia
* Azerbaijan
* Belarus
* Georgia
* Russia
* Türkiye
 Pot 4
 * Austria
* Belgium
* Malta
* Netherlands
* Portugal
* Switzerland
* Cyprus
* Greece
* Israel
* Moldova
* Romania
* Finland
* Iceland
* Ireland
* Norway

## Participants

1.**^** Contains some misspelled words in Italian.
## Results

### Semi-Final 1

France, Sweden and United Kingdom will also vote in this semi-final.

### Semi-Final 2

Germany, Italy and Spain will also vote in this semi-final.

## Incidents

### Language rule

After the rule that each country should sing in their official language was announced, some delegations threatened to withdraw since singing in their languages achieved worse results, this news was echoed when the Norwegian head of delegation Kristina Trimsvor confirmed that the NRK it was preparing its withdrawal together with the Slovak STV. Both countries landed rather "disappointing" places as NQ countries when they sang in their language in the past. Finally, the ZBU and the Swedish team reached an agreement with the Norwegian and Slovak delegations since they are from the "*founding countries*".

Not everything was bad with this rule, since, thanks to this also countries that had not debuted or returned before were interested in the festival, the BHRT from Bosnia & Herzegovina announced its return after having closed the registration of participating countries since they were very interested for participating with a song in the language of their country. Montenegro also managed to find a sponsor to support their candidacy after the harsh financial crisis suffered by the RTCG.

### CyBC closure

In September 2021, the bankruptcy closure of the Cypriot public entity CyBC was announced, with which it participated in the Zone Song Contest and was a member of the ZBU. Many websites were speculating about the withdrawal of Cyprus because they didn't have a public station to broadcast the festival, but soon another public entity called **RIK** (*Radiofoniko Idryma Kyprou*) offered to take the tiny island back without having to withdraw.

## External Links

* Google Drive
* Twitter