TV viewers of Melodifestivalen in Sweden 2018-2022

On March 13, 2021, about 3.68 million people watched the this year's final of the Swedish music TV show Melodifestivalen. This was an increase of over 400,000 viewers compared to the previous year. In the first half of 2020, the fourth semi-final of Melodifestivalen was the sixth most popular TV program in Sweden. In 2019, 71.3 percent of the Swedish population watched at least three minutes of any of Melodifestivalen's main broadcasts.

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 competed 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 2022 was Cornelia Jakobs with the song ‘Hold me closer’ who thus earned her opportunity to secure Sweden's seventh victory at the Eurovision Song Contest and allow the country to cath up with the current record holder Ireland. Sweden has been particulary successful at Eurovision Song Contest in the previous decade. Since the introduction of seminfinals at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2004, Sweden only failed to qualify for the final show once in 2010. Since then, the country famous for its pop music achieved results in the Top10 almost every year, including Melodifestivalen winners Loreen (2012) and Mans 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.
Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, in March 2020, the organizer announced that the Eurovision Song Contest will not take place that year.