Draft:Benidorm Fest 2025

Benidorm Fest 2025 is set to be the fourth edition of the annual Benidorm Fest, a television song contest held in Benidorm, organised and broadcast by Spanish national broadcaster RTVE. The winner will earn the right to represent in the Eurovision Song Contest 2025.

Format
The competition will consist of two semi-finals and a final. In total, 16 candidate songs will compete divided between the two semifinals, that is, eight will participate in each one. In each semifinal, the four songs with the most votes among a professional jury (50%), a demoscopic panel (25%) and the televote (25%), will qualify to the final. During the final, the eight qualified songs will be performed again and the winner will determined following the same voting system as in the semi-finals. In response to criticism for the low televoting figures in 2024, attributed to the relatively high costs of telephone calls and SMS messages, RTVE managers stated the goal to make the public voting free by means of a mobile app from 2025; this was confirmed upon the opening of the submission window on 20 May 2024.

Following the 2024 edition of the competition, representatives of Benidorm's municipal council (including mayor Toni Pérez), the Department of Innovation, Industry, Commerce and Tourism of the Generalitat Valenciana, and RTVE travelled to the 74th Sanremo Music Festival, currently serving as the Italian national selection for Eurovision; municipal councillor Jesús Carrobles revealed that the aim was to start a collaboration between the two events.

Competing entries
RTVE published the rules and regulations for Benidorm Fest 2025 on 20 May 2024, opening a submission window lasting until 10 October 2024. In order for an entry to qualify to compete, performers and at least one songwriter must be Spanish citizens over the age of 18 (at least 50% of Spanish citizens in the case of groups), and songs must contain at least 60% of the lyrics in one of the official languages of Spain. A professional panel will select 16 entries and 6 reserves.