The Song 4

The Song 4 was the fourth edition of the The Song. The contest was hosted in Florence, Italy, following the country's victory at the third edition in Nicosia, Cyprus, with the song "Guess Who's Back", performed by Il Tre. The contest was held at the Nelson Mandela Forum, and consisted of two semi-finals on 22 and 24 October, and a final on 19 November 2022. The three live shows were presented by Amadeus.

Forty-six countries participated in the fourth edition of the contest including Belarus who made their debut appearance, with Hungary, Latvia and San Marino returning to the contest. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Moldova failed to qualify from the pre-qualification round and they were forced to withdraw from this edition. The guest country of the third edition, Kazakhstan, withdrew from this edition.

Location
Florence is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.

Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered by many academics to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, becoming a major artistic, cultural, commercial, political, economic and financial center. During this time, Florence rose to a position of enormous influence in Italy, Europe, and beyond. Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.

The city attracts millions of tourists each year, and UNESCO declared the Historic Centre of Florence a World Heritage Site in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, Forbes ranked it as the most beautiful city in the world in 2010. Florence plays an important role in Italian fashion, and is ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world by Global Language Monitor; furthermore, it is a major national economic centre, as well as a tourist and industrial hub.

Florence lies in a basin formed by the hills of Careggi, Fiesole, Settignano, Arcetri, Poggio Imperiale and Bellosguardo (Florence). The Arno river, three other minor rivers (Mugnone, Ema and Greve) and some streams flow through it.

Venue


Nelson Mandela Forum, formerly Palazzetto dello sport di Firenze and Palasport, is an indoor sports arena that is located in Florence, Italy. Inaugurated in 1985, the arena was renamed to Nelson Mandela Forum in 2004.

The seating capacity of the arena is 7,500 people for basketball games, and the maximum capacity for rock concerts, with general admission tickets, is 8,262 people. It was the home arena of the Italian basketball club Pool Firenze Basket, before the club's relegation to the minor leagues in 2009. It is the home venue of women's volleyball club Il Bisonte Firenze since 2014.

The structure is property of the city of Florence and is managed, since 2003, by the Associazione Palasport – Nelson Mandela Forum under a 12-year management agreement.

The Nelson Mandela Forum has a formal agreement with the Nelson Mandela Foundation that allows the use of the name of the South African former president. The structure's compound is 25,000 m2 (269,098 sq ft) with 10,000 m2 (107,639 sq ft) of spaces where there are a main arena, a boxing training center, two areas used for gym (the latter being for many years home of the fencing center of Florence), one free climbing facility, and open spaces occupied by three permanent exhibitions on human rights.The arena hosted the 1990 basketball FIBA European Cup Winner's Cup Final, in which local Italian club Knorr Bologna won the title, in front of a crowd of 6,000 spectators. In 2010 and 2018, the arena was one of the venues of the men's Volleyball World Championship. The main financial sponsors are Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena (a bank foundation) and Unicoop Firenze (a supermarket chain). It has hosted the concerts of: Pooh, Vasco Rossi, Alessandra Amoroso, Mark Knopfler, Eros Ramazzotti, Oasis, Bob Dylan, Michael Bublé, Max Pezzali, Depeche Mode, Neil Young, Lenny Kravitz, Marilyn Manson, Biagio Antonacci, Zucchero, Renato Zero, Francesco Guccini, Jovanotti, Tiziano Ferro, Gianna Nannini, Subsonica, Giorgia, Caetano Veloso, Boy George, Claudio Baglioni, Deep Purple, Antonello Venditti, Elisa, Laura Pausini, Litfiba, Marco Mengoni, and many more. On 11 June 2010, it hosted WWE in Europe with Smackdown. From 22 to 29 September 2013 the Forum will host the 2013 UCI Road World Championships. As a result, the city has recently paved all the principal streets near the Forum. Bellator MMA has hosted two events in the arena Bellator 168 on 10 December 2016 and Bellator 188 on 9 December 2017 which were both headlined by Italian fighter Alessio Sakara.

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 6 cities 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 29 September, it was reported that Florence and Naples would be the cities left in the running to host the contest.

On 30 September 2022, the EBU and RAI announced Florence as the host city, with the Nelson Mandela Forum as the chosen venue for the contest.

Presenter
The Italian broadcaster & the EBU on 10th October announced the presenter that will host the shows of the third edition of The Song. The selected presenter that will host all three shows is Amadeus.

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 Italy, the countries that placed second to sixth in the previous edition (known as the "Big Five"): Australia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Ireland and Israel. 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 16th October 2022. 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:

Recap
The following locations were used for each participating country:


 * – Bergamo, Lombardy
 * - Laghi di Fusine, Udine, Friuli Venezia Giulia
 * – Bologna, Emilia-Romagna
 * - Villa Monastero, Varenna, Lombardy
 * - Merano, Trentino-South Tyrol
 * – Castel del Monte, Andria, Apulia
 * - Monte Conero, Ancona, Marche
 * – Isola di Capo Rizzuto, Crotone, Calabria
 * – Valsesia, Vercelli, Piedmont
 * – Favigna, Sicily
 * – Castle of Rocca Calascio, L'Aquila, Abruzzo
 * – MART, Rovereto, Trentino-South Tyrol
 * – Abbey of San Galgano, Siena, Tuscany
 * – Cortina d'Ampezzo, Belluno, Veneto
 * – Selinunte, Trapani, Sicily
 * – Cala Luna, Nuoro, Sardinia


 * – Manarola, Cinque Terre, Liguria
 * – Mole Antonelliana, Turin, Piedmont
 * – Burano, Venice, Veneto
 * – Comacchio, Emilia-Romagna
 * – Naples, Campania
 * – Florence, Tuscany
 * – Cagliari, Sardinia
 * – Miramare Castle, Trieste, Friuli Venezia Giulia
 * - Vernazza, La Spezia, Liguria
 * – Su Nuraxi, Barumini, Sardinia
 * – Scala dei Turchi, Agrigento, Sicily
 * – Lingotto, Turin
 * – Rome, Lazio
 * – Caserta, Campania
 * – Cavour, Piedmont


 * – San Quirico d'Orcia, Siena
 * – Vernazza, La Spezia, Liguria
 * – Lago di Scanno, L'Aquila, Abruzzo
 * – Venice, Veneto
 * – Turin, Piedmont
 * – Perugia, Umbria
 * – Procida, Naples, Campania
 * – Orta San Giulio, Novara, Piedmont
 * – Urbino, Marche
 * – Matterhorn, Aosta Valley
 * – Civita di Bagnoregio, Viterbo, Lazio
 * – Sacra di San Michele, Sant'Ambrogio di Torino, Piedmont
 * - Piazza San Marco, Venezia, Veneto
 * – Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna
 * – Marmore Falls, Terni, Umbria

Participating countries
Forty-six countries participated in the fourth edition of the contest including Belarus who made their debut appearance, with Hungary, Latvia and San Marino returning to the contest. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Moldova failed to qualify from the pre-qualification round and they were forced to withdraw from this edition. The guest country of the third edition, Kazakhstan, withdrew from this edition. The submissions for the third edition opened on 25th September 2022 while the deadline for the entries submission was on 15 October 2022.

Returning artists
ADONXS represented Slovakia for the second time, having previously represented the nation in the second edition as a part of the group Pace.

Semi-final 1
The first semi-final took place on 22nd October 2022. Twenty countries participated in the first semi-final. Those countries plus Czech Republic, Ireland and Israel voted in this semi-final. The highlighted countries qualified for the final. {{Legend|navajowhite|Qualifiers}}

Semi-final 2
The second semi-final took place on 24th October 2022. Twenty countries participated in the second semi-final. Those countries plus Australia, Georgia and Itay voted in this semi-final. The highlighted countries qualified for the final. {{Legend|navajowhite|Qualifiers}}

Final
The final took place on 19 November 2022. Twenty-six countries participated in the final. {{Legend|gold|Winner}}

Spokespersons
The spokespersons announced the 12-point score from their respective country's national jury in the following order:


 * 1) – Faouzia
 * 2) – Shygirl
 * 3) – Selin
 * 4) – Otto Virtanen
 * 5) – Victoria Azarenka
 * 6) – Agnes Brown
 * 7) – MØ
 * 8) – Iga Świątek
 * 9) – Evgenya Redko

 – Lola Marsh  – Inna  – Vitinha  – Nastia Liukin  – TBA  – TBA  – Szakács Gergő  – TBA  – Timothée Chalamet</li> </ol>

 – TBA</li>  – Oscar Piastri</li>  – Sergej Ćetković</li>  – TBA</li>  – Tayanna  – Camille</li>  – Vendredi Sur Mer</li>  – Il Tre</li> </ol>

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.

Disqualification of the Lebanese and Cypriot Head of Delegations
During the voting for Semi-final 2, the EBU discovered that the Heads of Delegation of Lebanon and Cyprus, as well as certain audience members had orchestrated a plan to exchange jury points as well as fake televotes. The EBU received evidence that this behaviour had also been conducted in various other competitions. The Heads of Delegation of both Lebanon and Cyprus were subsequently banned, the second edition in a row that this had occurred.

The voting juries in Semi-final 2 were given a chance to change their votes and remove Lebanon if they wanted to. It was announced that both countries would receive 0 points in televoting for the Semi-final, due to an inability to determine whether the televotes received by these countries were legitimate. This was later changed, and it was announced that both countries would receive a 50% deduction in their televoting score, and votes deemed to be legitimate were counted. However, both countries failed to qualify for the final.