The Song 4

The Song 4 will be the fourth edition of the The Song. The contest will be hosted in Italy, following the country's victory at the third edition in Nicosia, Cyprus, with the song "Guess Who's Back", performed by Il Tre.

Bidding phase
Between 25 and 26 September 2022, many cities across Italy expressed interest in hosting the contest. Representatives from the cities of Bologna, Milan and Naples voiced their interest, as well as the Mayor of Reggio Emilia, Luca Vecchi, who hoped to host the contest in the new RCF Arena, the largest open-air arena in Europe with a capacity of 100,000 spectators. The mayors of Rome, Rimini and Florence soon after also expressed interest in hosting the contest and were joined by Sanremo, Verona and Bari. On 26 September, RAI announced that 6cities had submitted their bid for hosting the contest and would be provided the following day with the bid books. They had until 30 September to draft and submit their detailed plans. On 30 September, it was reported that TBA would be the cities left in the running to host the contest. On 8 October 2021, the EBU and RAI announced TBA as the host city, with the TBA as the chosen venue for the contest.

Key: {{Legend|#CEDFF2|† Host venue}}

Pre-Qualification
The European Broadcaster Union (EBU) announced that the limit of entries for each edition would be the 46 participants. Because of the amount of confirmations the EBU created a pre-qualification round that takes place every edition before the actual contest. The EBU announced the change of the format in the pre-qualification round during the third edition, from this edition and on eight countries every edition qualify from the pre-qualification round to the semi-finals while the others are eliminated.

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.