STB and UA:PBC have revealed that the Ukrainian participant for Eurovision 2019 will be selected on February 23.

UA:PBC and STB have announced today that they have extended their Eurovision partnership for a further three years. The agreement sees STB organise the Ukrainian selection process, while UA:PBC covers the cost of the participation fee for the Eurovision Song Contest.

Vidbir will continue to be used as the Ukrainian selection process for Eurovision. The 2019 edition will be formed of three shows, two semi-finals on February 9 and 16 and a final on February 23. Ruslan Kvinta remains as the Producer of the show, while Sergey Pritula will host the competition.

The Head of STB commented;

Three years ago, starting our cooperation with UA: FIRST, STB channel set a goal for itself – to create a mega-site, on which any professional performer will be able to express itself to the whole of Europe. And we succeeded, because in three years the National Selection stage opened up to the public a lot of new names, gave a good start to many young artists, and the selection itself became the main musical event of the year and attracted the attention of successful producers and singers. This is a very worthy result that we are justly proud of. Therefore, we want to continue our cooperation with UA: FIRST, concentrating on production and creating what STB is best at – large-scale event-based television projects, which is now the National Selection for Eurovision

While Chairman of the Board of UA:PBC added;

Given the experience of previous years, we are happy to continue our cooperation with STB, because we are confident that Ukraine will be represented best: young artists will receive a rating platform, the audience will be pleased with the quality show, and the vote for the representative of Ukraine will be fair and open. As the youngest European Public Broadcaster, which is in a state of transformation and in conditions of 50% underfunding, we believe that our cooperation with the commercial channel of the Eurovision project is economically feasible: on our own, we now cannot ensure such high quality of the National selection as a commercial television channel

Source: STB

Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest Ukraine first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2003, when Oleksandr Ponomariov performed “Hasta la vista”. The following year Ruslana brought the country their first win with the song “Wild Dances”. It was a feat that would be replicated in 2016 by Jamala with her song “1944”; her emotionally charged song scored a record 534 points to take victory in Stockholm. Last year O.Torvald represented the country on home soil with the song “Time”. The group finished in 24th place, Ukraine’s worst result at the contest to date.