The Song 5

The Song 5 was the fifth edition of the The Song. The contest was hosted in N/A, Finland, following the country's victory at the fourth edition in Florence, Italy, with the song "Ei vaihdeta numeroita", performed by Pasa. The contest was held at the N/A, and consisted of two semi-finals on N/A and N/A February, and a final on N/A 2023. The three live shows were presented by TBA.

Forty-six countries participated in the fifth edition of the contest.

Bidding phase
Between 26 and 30 December 2022, many cities across Finland expressed interest in hosting the contest. Representatives from the cities of Espoo and Oulu voiced their interest, as well as Helsinki, who hoped to host the contest in Hartwall Arena, the second largest arena in Finland with a capacity of 13,349 spectators. On 30 December, Yle announced that 7 cities had submitted their bid for hosting the contest and would be provided the following day with the bid books. They had until 2 January to draft and submit their detailed plans.

Format
The competition consisted of two semi-finals and a final, a format which has been in use since the first edition. The ten countries with the highest scores in each semi-final qualified to the final where they joined the host nation Finland, the countries that placed second to sixth in the previous edition (known as the "Big Five"): Hungary, Italy, Serbia, Türkiye and Ukraine. Each participating country had their own national jury. The combination of the juries' full ranking produced an overall ranking of all competing entries. The song which scored the highest overall rank received 12 points, while the tenth-best ranked song received one point.

Pre-qualification
The European Broadcaster Union (EBU) announced that the limit of entries for each edition would be 46 participants. As the confirmation of participation from eligible countries exceeded this amount, the EBU created a pre-qualification round that would take place each edition before the actual contest. During the third edition, the EBU announced that there would be a change of formation to the Pre-Qualification Round. From this edition and onwards, eight countries shall qualify into the semi-finals from the pre-qualification round, whilst the remaining are eliminated.

Semi-final allocation draw
The draw that determined the semi-final allocation was held on TBA January 2023. The forty countries were divided into five pots, based on their geographical place. Each time a country was drawn from the pot, its semi-final was determined.

The five pots were the following:

Other countries


Countries that are active members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are also eligible to participate in The Song. As in every edition, an invitation to all the members have been sent in order to confirm whether they will participate or not. The following list of countries declined stating their reasons as shown below.