The Ukrainian national final, Vidbir 2026, was concluded a while ago, and selected the country’s representative for Eurovision 2026. Leléka with the song Ridnym won the hearts of the Ukrainian public and the Ukrainian jury, and will travel to Vienna for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest!
The show started with Ziferblat, who performed last year’s winning song of Vidbir 2025, Bird of Pray. With this song, they represented Ukraine in last year’s Eurovision in Basel, winning the first semi-final and coming in 9th place in the final.
The two presenters of the night were Timur Miroshnychenko and Lesia Nikitiuk . Support for the presentation of Vidbir 2025 was also provided by Anna Tulieva, who was in the Eurofans Zone, created exclusively for the… hardcore fans of Ukraine, who watched Vidbir 2026 live.
The two presenters, after explaining the process that would be followed today, also introduced tonight’s jury, which was responsible for 50% of the result. The jury members were Zlata Ognevich, Ruslana, Yevhen Filatov, Vitaliy Drozdov and Kostiantyn Tomilchenko.
Tonight’s 10 performances
We had the opportunity to watch 10 unique artists perform their songs. The show was pre-recorded for security reasons, and the results were broadcast live. Today’s performances were as follows:
You can see tonight’s performances by clicking on the song title.
Tonight’s guests
During the voting, we had the opportunity to watch the performances of the other guests at Vidbir 2026. More specifically, we watched Moldova’s representative at Eurovision 2026, Satoshi, perform his entry, Viva Moldova! Then we saw music producer Svitlana Tarabarova with the last three Junior Eurovision participants representing Ukraine, Sofia Nersesian, Artem Kotenko, and Anastasia Dymyd, accompanied by the musicians of Superhumans Center. The performances continued with a megamix by Zlata Ognevich, the country’s representative at Eurovision 2013, and TVORCHI, Ukraine’s representatives at Eurovision 2023. Finally, the guest performances ended with Jamala, winner of Eurovision 2016, accompanied by the Ukrainian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
The time of the announcement of the results
Shortly before the announcement of the result, OGAE Ukraine presented its award to Jerry Heil, in a vote involving many Eurovision fan clubs. Among them was, of course, OGAE Greece!
Today’s result was determined 50% by the Ukrainian public and 50% by the five-member jury. The public had the opportunity to vote via the Diia application and via SMS, while the jury was selected by the Ukrainian radio and television broadcaster.
After the jury voted, in first place is Leleka with 10 points, in second place is LAUD with 9 points, while the top three is completed by Jerry Heil with 8 points.
Then, the voting of the public was announced. After the scores were added up, Leleka came in first place, receiving the highest score from the public! LAUD came in second place, while Jerry Heil came in third.
The winner of Vidbir 2026 is Leleka, where she will travel to Vienna, Austria in May to represent Ukraine, continue the impressive qualifying streak and bring the best possible result for the country!
What did you think of Ukraine’s participation in Eurovision 2026? Tell us in the comments and vote in the poll below!
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