Romania has failed to qualify for the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest, for the second consecutive year. In 2018, the country missed the final for the first time in 14 years, after The Humans, the band representing the country, didn’t manage to pass the semifinals.

Romania’s representative this year, Ester Peony, performed the song On a Sunday in the Eurovision’s second semifinal organized on May 16, and failed to qualify for the final scheduled to take place at Expo Tel Aviv this Saturday.

A total of 26 countries will compete in the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, namely Malta, Albania, Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, Denmark, San Marino, North Macedonia, Sweden, Slovenia, Cyprus, Netherlands, Greece, Israel, Norway, UK, Iceland, Estonia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, France, Italy, Serbia, Switzerland, Austria, and Spain.

The Romanian representatives to Eurovision have qualified to every final since 2004, the year when the semifinals system was introduced. The only two exceptions so far were 2016, when Romania was kicked out of Eurovision because of the national television TVR’s debts to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and 2018 when The Humans failed to qualify to the final.

Romania joined the Eurovision contest in 1994 and it never managed to win the competition so far. It managed to finish in top five on three occasions, and in 2005 and 2010 it ended the final on the third place. In 2017 Romania ranked seventh, its representatives Ilinca and Alex Florea gathering 282 points with their song Yodel It!.

newsroom@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/Eurovision Romania)