TV viewers of Melodifestivalen in Sweden 2018-2024

On March 9th, 2024, about 2.86 million people watched the final of the Swedish music TV show Melodifestivalen of the year. This was a decrease of nearly 200,000 viewers compared to the previous year. In the first half of 2023, the final of Melodifestivalen was the most popular TV program in Sweden.

Qualification rounds

Melodifestivalen is Sweden’s national preliminary round of the European Song Contest and determines the country’s representative. 28 artists compete at Melodifestivalen, organized by the public service broadcaster Sveriges Television. In each "deltävling" (heat), the first two musicians with the most audience votes directly qualify for the final. The third and fourth places appear a second time in Andra Chansen's broadcast. There, the candidates compete against each other in duels. Again, the artists that receive the most audience votes, qualify for the final. As of 2022, the Andra Chansen show has been renamed "Semi-finals" and the competition has slightly been altered. The eight artists compete in two groups of four, with those two artists receiving most points in each group advancing to the final. In Melodifestivalen’s final in turn, twelve performers appear.

The winner of the show

The winner of Melodifestivalen in 2023 was Loreen with the song "Tattoo," who thus earned her opportunity to secure Sweden's seventh victory at the Eurovision Song Contest and allow the country to catch up with the current record holder Ireland. Sweden has been particulary successful at the Eurovision Song Contest in the previous decade. Since the introduction of semi-finals at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2004, Sweden only failed to qualify for the final show once in 2010. Since then, the country has been famous for its pop music achieving results in the Top10 almost every year, including Melodifestivalen winners' Loreen (2012) and Måns Zelmerlöw (2015) who also secured Sweden's fifth and sixth Eurovision victories. In addition, Eric Saade and Sanna Nielsen, having won Melodifestivalen in 2011 and 2014 respectively, each finished in third place when they were respresenting Sweden on the Eurovision stage.