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Sweden has unveiled the 30 acts who will battle to fly the flag at next year’s Eurovision in Vienna, in a Melodifestivalen line-up that leans shamelessly into nostalgia while quietly refreshing the format for the streaming era.
At a press conference in Stockholm on Tuesday, broadcaster SVT named six acts for each of five travelling heats, starting in Linköping on 31 January and ending with a 12-song grand final at Stockholm’s Strawberry Arena on 7 March.
It is an unusually starry and self-aware cast: late-90s pop idols A-Teens reappear with their first new music in two decades; American Song Contest winner AleXa brings K-pop swagger; and schlager veterans Robin Bengtsson, Sanna Nielsen and Brandsta City Släckers are wheeled out like beloved box sets. Around them, a cohort of newer names reflects SVT’s attempt to keep Melodifestivalen relevant to TikTok while still being safe Saturday-night television.
Who is competing – and where
The tour format is familiar, but the geography underlines the show’s role as a travelling national ritual. Each heat features six songs:
Heat 1 – Linköping (31 January)
Indra, Noll2, Junior Lerin, Greczula, A-Teens and Jacqline open the season at Saab Arena.
Heat 2 – Gothenburg (7 February)
Klara Almström, Arwin, 2017 Eurovision act Robin Bengtsson, FELICIA, Laila Adèle and Brandsta City Släckers take over Scandinavium.
Heat 3 – Kristianstad (14 February)
Saga Ludvigsson, Patrik Jean, Emilia Pantić, punk outfit Korslagda, teenage talent Eva Jumatate and duo Medina make up a line-up skewed towards newer names.
Heat 4 – Malmö (21 February)
Meira Omar, Cimberly, country-leaning Erika Jonsson, Felix Manu, rock band Smash Into Pieces and singer-songwriter Timo Räisänen compete at Malmö Arena.
Heat 5 – Sundsvall (28 February)
Comic persona Lilla Al-Fadji, Vilhelm Buchaus, JULIETT, K-pop figure AleXa, and returning Eurovision star Sanna Nielsen join newcomer Bladë to close the heats in Sundsvall.
From each heat the top two songs go straight to the final, while the third-placed entries head to a new “Final Qual” round to fight over the last spots. In the heats, the public decides alone; in the final, juries and viewers split the vote 50/50 to pick Sweden’s act for Vienna.
Nostalgia, but with a knowing wink
SVT’s own write-up leads with three names that speak directly to different corners of the Melodifestivalen audience: A-Teens, Junior Lerin and Brandsta City Släckers.
A-Teens, who made their name turning ABBA songs into fizzy teen-pop in the late 90s, are billed as competition debutants despite being chart dinosaurs. They arrive with “Iconic”, described by its heavyweight writing team – Dino Medanhodzic, Jimmy Jansson, Moa “Cazzi Opeia” Carlebecker and Thomas G:son – as the group’s first new material in 20 years.
Brandsta City Släckers, the hi-vis-clad firemen who once bellowed “Kom och ta mig” across Swedish living rooms, return as fully fledged competitors after a nostalgia-bait interval act in 2025. They are promising something that will not sound like “Brandsta 2002”, which, in Melodifestivalen terms, counts as a bold artistic statement.
On the more contemporary end of the nostalgia spectrum sit Medina and Smash Into Pieces, both of whom have finished in the top three at Mello twice in recent years.They are the kind of acts who now function as dependable IP within the show’s universe: recognisable enough to keep casual viewers on the sofa, versatile enough to look plausible on a Eurovision stage
A K-pop crossover and a deep bench of debutants
The booking of AleXa, competing under that name rather than her Korean name Kim Seri, is arguably the season’s biggest swing. The Korean-American singer won NBC’s short-lived American Song Contest in 2022 with “Wonderland”, a song co-written by Cazzi Opeia and Andreas Carlsson, among others.
Bringing her into Melodifestivalen – again with Swedish writers attached – is both a nod to Sweden’s reach in global pop and a calculated attempt to lure younger, K-pop-literate fans to a format that still draws families around an actual television. Her song, “Tongue Tied”, sits in the Sundsvall heat alongside acts more rooted in Swedish pop and comedy.
Behind the headlines, the field is unusually fresh. According to SVT’s in-house stats site Mellopedia, 24 of the 49 named performers are debuting in Melodifestivalen, and half of the 30 entries are fronted entirely by first-timers.
Teenage singer Eva Jumatate, at 17 the youngest competitor, has “Selfish” in Kristianstad, while Noll2, Junior Lerin, Felix Manu and Bladë add an air of emerging-artist showcase to what could otherwise feel like a greatest-hits package.
Language politics and songwriting balance
In recent years SVT has been nudging Melodifestivalen back towards Swedish-language material, and the 2026 edition quietly marks a high-water line. Thirteen of the 30 entries will be performed in Swedish, the largest share since 2012.
Sweden has become so adept at turning English-language Mello entries into Eurovision top-ten finishes that the national contest risks sounding less like a Swedish festival and more like an export showcase. A higher concentration of Swedish-language songs – among them Erika Jonsson’s rural “Från landet”, Timo Räisänen’s “Ingenting är efter oss” and Korslagda’s cheekily titled “King of Rock ’n’ Roll” – gives the tour stops in Kristianstad and Malmö in particular a more local texture.
Under the bonnet, the songwriting pool is still skewed but moving in a less lopsided direction. Mellopedia counts 86 credited writers this year, 56 men and 30 women, with 38 debuting as Mello songwriters. Twenty of the 30 songs include at least one female writer, although ten are still written exclusively by men and only a single entry has an all-female writing team.
The familiar hit-factory names are everywhere. G:son, Deb, Wrethov, Jansson and Cazzi Opeia crop up across the heats, often in combinations that have already delivered Eurovision finalists. For all the talk of new blood, this remains an ecosystem where a small group of writers and producers exert outsized influence over what Swedish pop sounds like.
A new way of choosing – at least on paper
If the artist list feels like Melodifestivalen business as usual, the way those 30 songs were chosen is not. SVT received a record 3,888 submissions for 2026, the highest number in the show’s history and a 39 per cent increase on last year.
In August, the broadcaster announced that, for the first time, the final field would be selected by a four-person editorial group from the Melodifestivalen team, rather than a large external jury. The traditional “urvalsjury” still listens to the entries, but now serves as a kind of advisory panel to an in-house committee led by long-time producer Karin Gunnarsson, together with Viktor Berglund, Lotta Furebäck and Daniel Edvardsson.
The shift is partly bureaucratic. Project leader Anders Wistbacka has said the change is about keeping editorial responsibility clearly within SVT. But it also reflects how the contest now sees itself: less an open call for songs, and more a curated entertainment property where the broadcaster takes open ownership of what makes the cut.
On stage, there are tweaks too. All five heats will be decided entirely by the audience, with international juries only re-entering the process in the grand final. A new “Final Qual” stage, sitting between the heats and the final, gives third-placed songs a second life and offers SVT one more broadcast where it can reheat the drama.
Sweden, still Sweden
Melodifestivalen occupies an odd place in the wider Eurovision ecosystem. Sweden has now tied (potential boycotting nation) Ireland’s record of seven Eurovision wins, and the modern Mello machine is widely treated as a gold standard for national finals.
It is simultaneously a consultative exercise – gauging public taste, test-driving production tricks – and an industrial process for minting songs that sound like they already exist.
The 2026 line-up does not radically disrupt that model. It folds in a K-pop crossover, nods politely to punk, offers more Swedish lyrics and tinkers with voting mechanics. But at heart it remains a briskly paced talent revue anchored by familiar faces, familiar songwriters and a format Sweden has long since learned to game.
Whether the eventual winner can convert that into an eighth Eurovision title in Vienna is next year’s concern. For now, SVT has done what it does every winter: turned a list of names into a national talking-point, and reminded the rest of Europe that, with Eurovision, Sweden is still playing on home turf even when the contest is somewhere else.
