Portugal: Listen to the songs competing at Festival da Canção 2024

All is set for Portugal, and on 24 February the country will start deciding on who could potentially be their Eurovision 2024 representative. That's the date for Festival da Canção 2024 Semi-final 1.

Today, Portugal's public broadcaster RTP held a press conference in Lisbon's Music Box where the 20 songs up for the honor were revealed.

The press conference was hosted by Inês Lopes Gonçalves, a familiar face to the Festival da Canção.

Festival da Canção 2024

Portugal will be using Festival da Canção to determine their Eurovision 2024 entry. This year's edition won't suffer drastic changes from last year and will maintain its previous format, including an extra qualifier per round, which means the Final will feature 12 songs overall.

All of the shows will be held in RTP's studios in Lisbon:

• 24 February 2024: Semi-final 1
• 2 March 2024: Semi-final 2
• 9 March 2024: Final

Portugal in Eurovision

Portugal has participated in the contest 54 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 8 out of 17 times.