Pre-Qualification Round 1

Pre-Qualification Round 1 (abbreviated PQR 1), is a pre-event held for the first edition of The Song. Nine countries were participating and two of them qualified to the semi finals of the edition.

Format
In the run-up to this contest, the European Broadcasting Union finally started to grapple with the explosion in the number of potential participating countries. For the first time, a pre-qualifying round was introduced, but only for countries that were the nine last countries to confirm their participation. In the meantime, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Monaco, Lebanon, San Marino, Slovakia and Slovenia were left to battle it out in a special competition called Pre-Qualification Round on May for the mere two places available at the semi-finals in Dublin.

Slovene Entry
RTV SLO announced that the country selected BQL, Nika Zrojan and Isaac Palma with the song "Vruće" but later it was discovered that the song is a cover. The Slovene broadcaster was forced to disqualify the entry.