GreatVision Song Contest 23

Final date
 Venue
 Broadcaster
 Entries
 Debuting
**Participation map**
* Confirmed participant     Confirmed participant that have their artist or song     Past participant that will not participate
 Voting system

**GreatVision Song Contest 23**, often referred to as **GVSC 23**, will be the twenty-third edition of the GreatVision Song Contest. It will be held in the  Serbia, after Andjela Keleman won twenty-second edition with "Ranjiva". RTS chose the SPC Vojvodina in Novi Sad to serve as the host venue for the edition, while Severina and Željko Joksimović was selected as the presenters:

## Location

*For further information see Serbia*
**Serbia**, is a land-locked country situated at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe in the southern Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. It borders Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest. The country claims a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia's population numbers approximately seven million. Its capital, Belgrade, ranks among the longest inhabited and largest citiеs in southeastern Europe.

Inhabited since the Paleolithic Age, the territory of modern-day Serbia faced Slavic migrations to the Southeastern Europe in the 6th century, establishing several regional states in the early Middle Ages at times recognised as tributaries to the Byzantine, Frankish and Hungarian kingdoms. The Serbian Kingdom obtained recognition by the Holy See and Constantinople in 1217, reaching its territorial apex in 1346 as the relatively short-lived Serbian Empire. By the mid-16th century, the entirety of modern-day Serbia was annexed by the Ottomans; their rule was at times interrupted by the Habsburg Empire, which began expanding towards Central Serbia from the end of the 17th century while maintaining a foothold in Vojvodina. In the early 19th century, the Serbian Revolution established the nation-state as the region's first constitutional monarchy, which subsequently expanded its territory. Following disastrous casualties in World War I, and the subsequent unification of the former Habsburg crownland of Vojvodina (and other territories) with Serbia, the country co-founded Yugoslavia with other South Slavic peoples, which would exist in various political formations until the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia formed a union with Montenegro,[11] which was peacefully dissolved in 2006 and restoring Serbia's independence as a sovereign state for the first time since the late 1910s.[12] In 2008, the parliament of the province of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, with mixed responses from the international community.

A unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, Serbia is a member of the UN, CoE, CERN, OSCE, PfP, BSEC, CEFTA, and is acceding to the WTO. Since 2014, the country has been negotiating its EU accession with perspective of joining the European Union by 2025. Like some other European countries, Serbia has suffered from democratic backsliding in recent years, having dropped in ranking from "Free" to "Partly Free" in the 2019 Freedom House report. Since 2007, Serbia formally adheres to the policy of military neutrality. The country provides a social security, universal health care system, and a tuition-free primary and secondary education to its citizens. An upper-middle income economy with a dominant service sector, the country ranks relatively high on the Human Development Index (63rd) and Social Progress Index (45th) as well as the Global Peace Index (50th).

## Host City

*For further information see Novi Sad*
**Novi Sad** is the second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the Pannonian Plain on the border of the Bačka and Srem geographical regions. Lying on the banks of the Danube river, the city faces the northern slopes of Fruška Gora.

According to the 2011 census, Novi Sad proper has a population of 250,439 while its urban area (including the adjacent settlements of Petrovaradin and Sremska Kamenica) comprises 277,522 inhabitants. The population of the administrative area of the city totals 341,625 people.

Novi Sad was founded in 1694 when Serb merchants formed a colony across the Danube from the Petrovaradin Fortress, a strategic Habsburg military post. In the following centuries, it transformed into an important trading and manufacturing centre as well as a centre of Serbian culture, earning it the nickname Serbian Athens. The city was heavily devastated in the 1848 Revolution, but was subsequently rebuilt and restored. Today, along with the Serbian capital city of Belgrade, Novi Sad is an industrial and financial centre important to the Serbian economy. Novi Sad is the European Capital of Culture for the year 2021[7] and European Youth Capital 2019.

### Venue

*For further information see SPC Vojvodina*
**SPC Vojvodina**, short for Sports and Business Center Vojvodina, commonly referred to as SPENS (Serbian Cyrillic: СПЕНС), is a multi-purpose venue located in Novi Sad, Vojvodina, Serbia.

## Format

### Voting

The GBU has announced that the voting system would be each country awarding two sets of points from 1-8, 10 and 12: one from their professional jury and the other from televoting. The new voting system is also used to determine the qualifiers from each semi-final, but as before the qualifiers are announced in a random order.

### Semi Final allocation draw

The draw to determine the allocation of the participating countries into their respective semi-finals took place TBA in December 2020. The first part of the draw determined in which semi-final the Big Six would have to vote. The second part of the draw decided in which half of the respective semi-finals each country would perform, with the exact running order determined by the producers of the show at a later date. Seventen countries will participate in each semi-finals, respectively. From each semi-final, ten countries will join the "Big 6" in the final, where a total of twenty-six countries will participate.

The thirty-five semi-finalists were allocated into six pots, based on their geographical place. Each time a country was be drawn from the pot, it´s half of the semi-final was determined.

The six pots were the following:

* Finland
* Greenland
* Iceland
* Sweden
* United Kingdom
* Germany
* Liechtenstein
* Netherlands
* Poland
* Switzerland
* Cyprus
* Greece
* Moldova
* Romania
 Pot 4
 * China
* Hong Kong
* Kazakhstan
* Malaysia
* North Korea
* South Korea
* Italy
* Malta
* San Marino
* Spain
* Brazil
* Japan
* Kiribati
* Lebanon

### Running order

The Running order of both Semi-finals will be official announced by RTS in December 2020, shortly before the semi-finals start. The Running order for Grand Final will be official announced, one day before the Grand Final will start.

## Participating countries

**Fourty** countries have confirmed their provisional participation in the contest. This includes, Hong Kong and Lebanon which returned after their seven-edition abscence,
Malaysia which returned after their three-edition abscence, Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, Moldova and San Marino which returned after their two-edition abscence, Iceland, Italy which returned after their one-edition abscence, Greenland will make his debut appearance in this edition.

**Thirteen** countries announced their withdrawal from the contest, Albania, France, India, Indonesia, Ireland, North Macedonia, and Vietnam, announced their withdrawal citing their Head of Delegation change as the reason. While the HoD's of Algeria, Thailand and Slovakia had no longer interest or time to participate in the contest. Furthermore the HoD's of Canada and New Zealand failed to confirm within the deadline. Hungary failed to present an entry within the deadline.

## Results

### Semi-final 1

Seventeen countries will participate in the first Semi-final. Denmark, Serbia and Russia will also vote in this semi-final.

### Semi-final 2

Seventeen countries will participate in the second Semi-final. Åland Islands, Turkey and United States will also vote in this semi-final.

### Final

The following countries either finished in the top 6 of the previous edition and therefore automatically qualify to the final of this edition or qualified from the semi-finals.

## Other countries

*Further information: List of able countries in GreatVision Song Contest*
Countries that are active members of the GreatVision Broadcasting Union (GBU) are also eligible to participate in the GreatVision Song Contest. As in every edition, an invitation to all the members have been sent in order to confirm whether they will participate or not. The following list of countries declined stating their reasons as shown below.