Photo: Pedro Pina - RTP

Portugal: First six qualify for Festival da Canção 2025 Final

10 songs were performed in Portugal's national selection competition for Eurovision 2025. Out of those, six qualified and will be returning in two weeks for the Festival da Canção Final

The long and late nights of Portugal's Festival da Canção are back, and will be sticking around for three weeks.

Tonight the very first Semi-final of the country's national selection contest took place in RTP's studios in Lisbon. It featured 10 entries and two different voting methods to gather the qualifiers.

The public and the jury split the decision equally for the first round, which saw five songs qualify. The sixth qualifier was determined solely by the audience during a flash vote that only lasted for a few minutes. When it was all said and done, these were the results:

Festival da Canção 2025 – Semi-final 1

First round of voting

		points
place		Total	Jury	Public	running	Rating
1	Margarida Campelo – "Eu sei que o amor" Final	15	12	3	5
2	Bluay – "Ninguém" Final	15	10	5	8
3	Jéssica Pina – "Calafrio" Final	14	6	8	9
4	Marco Rodrigues – "A Minha Casa" Final	14	2	12	4
5	Josh – "Tristeza" Final	13	7	6	6
6	Peculiar – "Adamastor"	13	3	10	10
7	Capital da Bulgária – "Lisboa"	12	8	4	7
8	Xico Gaiato – "Ai Senhor"	12	5	7	1
9	Du Nothin – "Sobre Nós"	6	4	2	3
10	Rita Sampaio – "Voltas"	2	1	1	2

5 finalists determined by 50% jury and 50% public voting

Second round of voting

place		Votes
1	Peculiar – "Adamastor" Final	43.6%
2	Xico Gaiato – "Ai Senhor"	19.1%
3	Capital da Bulgária – "Lisboa"	15.1%
4	Du Nothin – "Sobre Nós"	14.9%
5	Rita Sampaio – "Voltas"	7.3%

1 finalist determined by 100% public voting

Data from: National Selections Festival da Canção 2025

Festival da Canção's first Semi-final was hosted by José Carlos Malato and Jorge Gabriel. Alexandre Guimarães also helped by guiding the green room and interviewing the acts.

The jury panel for tonight featured:

Fábia Rebordão;
Iolanda (Portugal 2024);
Kady;
Margarida Pinto Correia;
Martim Sousa Tavares;
Miguel Ribeiro;
Tiago Nacarato.

At last the band Folk Fogo performed as an interval act.

Festival da Canção 2025

In order to decide which song and artist will travel to Basel (Switzerland) to represent Portugal in Eurovision 2025, RTP is hosting its yearly song festival, Festival da Canção.

Not a lot of changes were introduced in this year's contest. The event will continue to be held in RTP's studios in Lisbon and feature three shows: two Semi-finals and a Final.

Each Semi-final will have six songs qualifying meaning there will be 12 in the Final. Each show will be hosted by different presenters.

Semi-Final 1: 22 February 2025 (hosted by Jorge Gabriel and José Carlos Malato)
Semi-Final 2: 1 March 2025 (hosted by Tânia Ribas de Oliveira and Sónia Araújo)
Final: 8 March 2025 (hosted by Filomena Cautela and Vasco Palmeirim)

Portugal in the Eurovision Song Contest

Portugal has participated in the contest 55 times since 1964. It was a very bad start, as they managed to get zero points in their debut year.

Before Eurovision 2017, they had never won the contest, and had never made the top 5. In fact, Portugal held the record for most appearances in the contest without a win!

But that changed in 2017, when Salvador Sobral won with "Amar Pelos Dois."

Since the introduction of the Semi-finals in 2004, Portugal has only qualified for the Grand Final 9 out of 18 times.