Pre-Qualification Round 3

Pre-Qualification Round 3 (abbreviated PQR 3), is a pre-event held for the third edition of The Song. Seven countries were participating and two of them qualified to the semi finals of the edition. Slovenia and Lebanon qualified to the semi-finals.

Format
The European Broadcaster Union (EBU) announced that the limit of entries for each edition would be the 46 participants plus the Guest country for the third edition that was Kazakhstan. Because of the amount of confirmations the EBU created a pre-qualification round that takes place every edition before the actual contest. Two countries every edition qualify from the pre-qualification round to the semi-finals while the others are eliminated. This edition the participating countries of the pre-qualification round were Belarus, Hungary, Latvia, Lebanon, Malta, San Marino and Slovenia.

Scoreboard
Full results including televoting and results from the individual jury members were released shortly after the announcement of the semi-finalists.

12 points
Below is a summary of the maximum 12 points each country awarded to another in the pre-qualification round:

Rigging of national selection
On 12 August 2022, the EBU noticed unusual voting patters in the Cypriot national selection results. The head of delegation of Cyprus was confronted about the allegations and not being able to repeal any of the accusations, the Cypriot national selection results were deemed invalid and the winning entry, "Close" by Ryan Ennis featuring Michaela was disqualified from competing. The new head of delegation of Cyprus chose internally the Cypriot-British duo MakeYouKnowLove with the song "Don't Need Heaven".

Removal from position
A few hours later on 12 August 2022, it was also discovered that the Cypriot head of delegation had brought in alt accounts to the server in order to gain a significant unfair advantage and thus was removed from position as head of delegation of Cyprus, Denmark and Lebanon. New heads of delegation were chosen for the previously mentioned countries alongside new entries. Ida Laurberg, who won the Danish national selection with "Grayzone" was replaced by TBA and Anthony Keyrouz and ZANA, who were supposed to represent Lebanon in the pre-qualification round with "Hush Hush (Don't Be Shy)" were replaced by Maro with the song "Hellstorm". The Cypriot head of delegation was then banned from the server.