Benidorm Fest has held a new presentation in the Alicante city, to reveal some of the new features for 2025. The first news is the dates. Its semi-finals will be on Tuesday 28 and Thursday 30 January, both on La 1 de TVE. The final, with the qualifiers from each semi-final, will take place on Saturday 1 February. In principle, the number of participants remains at 16 and the submission period is now open.
The main changes are two. One of the criticisms of the festival is that revealing the ranking order of each semi-final took away from the excitement of the grand final. Each semi-final was very exciting, but the final automatically became a battle between the winner of each semi-final. From 2025, in each semi-final the 4 qualifiers will be revealed, but not their order.
“We will have to change things up so that the announcement of the voting results does not lose its excitement,” revealed Ana María Bordas, as reported by Vertele.
The second new development is the signing of Beatriz Luengo for the group of advisors of the Benidorm Fest, which until now was made up of Tony Sánchez-Ohlsson, Rayden and Pablo Cebrián. On the other hand, a collaboration with the Viña de Mar Festival has been announced, according to which the aim is to expand the internationalisation of the event.
In fact, one of the goals with Nebulossa, winners of the Benidorm Fest 2024, was to introduce them to the Mexican and Latin American markets. Currently, the cities in the world that listen to them the most are Madrid, Barcelona, Mexico, Valencia and Helsinki, in that order.
