Twinkle, twinkle little star! How I wonder who you are! Well, you don’t have to wonder for much longer as the winner of HaKokhav HaBa L’Eurovizion (trust me, it will be easier for everyone if we just call it “The Next Star for Eurovision”) has just been crowned and if you somehow managed to completely skip the title of this article (how? TELL ME OF YOUR MAGIC WAYS!) then let me throw some candy wrappers in the air to simulate confetti and reveal that yes, that winner is named Eden Alene .

Congratulations to Eden Alene! She will proudly be flying the Israeli flag in Rotterdam once May rolls along. Telling you exactly how we ended up here would take about 600 more pages going through about a hundred shows dating all the way back to November 1919…Or maybe that was 2019. Either way, too long and we have a winner here to celebrate! We are going to have to wait a bit to hear her actual entry as that will be picked in a very special show called HaShir HaBa L’Eurovizion taking place on March 3. There, Eden Alene will perform a few possible entries as a mixture of a professional jury (65%), the judging panel (5%) and televoting (30%) decide which song is best suited for Rotterdam 2020!

If you missed today’s show (I can’t blame you, Sanremo requires focus and determination to take on fully), then down below you can find a quick rundown on how Eden Alene was crowned the winner:

Round one, FIGHT!

Similarly to last year’s final. we started things off with ROUND ONE, because starting it with round two would just be bizarre. The four finalists were divided into two duels, where the winner of each duel went on to round two. All of the contestants did some YouTubing, found the right song to sing and hoped for the best as they faced the public and the five judges (Asaf Amdursky, Keren Peles, Shiri Maimon, Static & Ben-El Tavori and Itay Levi) in the studio! Their combined scores determined the overall winner of each duel.

The result of the first duel was:

Contestant Score Result Eden Alene 66% Eliminated Orr Amrami-Brockman 73% Advanced

The result of the second duel was:

Contestant Score Result Ellalee Lahav 75% Advanced Gaya Shaki 61% Eliminated

Because things can never be simple, it was time for the public to then save one of the eliminated contestants and after a brief round of interval acts and lots and lots of flashing lights, tense music and close-ups of scared faces, it was announced that Eden Alene was through to round two!

Two is a nice number. I like two.

Three contestants, three songs, one winner! With the duel round behind them, it was time for our contestants to (guess what) sing MORE covers! The winner of this round was determined by the combined scores of the public (who made up 50% of the result) and the usual judges + guest jury (first grade math time: they made up the other 50%) and after a few guest performances and more close ups of terrified singers, we ended up with these results:

Contestant Jury Audience Total Orr Amrami-Brockman 98 60 158 Eden Alene 110 150 260 Ellalee Lahav 92 90 182

Congratulations to Eden Alene once more! Who was your favourite of the four finalists? Do you think Eden Alene might repeat Netta’s success and bring home another victory for Israel? Will we ever see anyone with a moustache as good as Kobi Marimi’s?

Give us your opinion in the comments below and on social media @ESCXTRA and be sure to like our Facebook page for the latest updates!