Sanremo Music Festival 2022

The Sanremo Music Festival 2022 (Festival di Sanremo 2022), officially the 72nd Italian Song Festival (72º Festival della canzone italiana), was the 72nd edition of the annual Sanremo Music Festival, a television song contest held at the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, organised and broadcast by RAI. The show was held between 1 and 5 February 2022, and was presented for the third time in a row by Amadeus, who also served as the artistic director for the competition, alongside a number of co-hosts.

The festival was won by Mahmood and Blanco with "Brividi", earning them the right to represent in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, held on home soil in Turin; Mahmood had previously won Sanremo in 2019 and had represented Italy in that year's Eurovision.

Format
The 2022 edition of the Sanremo Music Festival took place at the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, Liguria, organized by the Italian public broadcaster RAI. The artistic director and the presenter for the competition was Amadeus, for the third consecutive year.

The venue returned to its full capacity during the festival, after the presence of an audience was not allowed in the previous edition due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Presenters
In August 2021, RAI officially confirmed Amadeus as the presenter of the 72nd edition of the Sanremo Music Festival. Together with Amadeus, five co-hosts alternated during the five evenings: Ornella Muti, Lorena Cesarini, Drusilla Foer, Maria Chiara Giannetta and Sabrina Ferilli.

Besides these, Orietta Berti and Fabio Rovazzi hosted parts of the show (for sponsorship reasons) from the cruise ship Costa Toscana off the shore of Sanremo.

Voting
Voting occurred through the combination of three methods:
 * Public televoting, carried out via landline, mobile phone, the contest's official mobile app, and online voting.
 * Jury of the press room, TV, radio and web.
 * Demoscopic jury, composed by 1000 music fans who vote from their homes via an electronic voting system managed by Ipsos.

Their voting was articulated as follows:


 * First two nights: half of the entrants were judged by three separate panels from the jury of the press room, TV, radio and web.
 * Third night: all of the entrants were judged through a 50/50 split system by means of televoting and the demoscopic jury. The results were combined with those of the previous nights.
 * Fourth night: the same systems used on the first three nights were put in place.
 * Fifth night: the entrants were judged by televoting alone, to be added up to the results obtained that far; ultimately, a final voting round (again a sum of televoting and the two juries) was held among the top 3, which determined the winner.

Sanremo Giovani 2021
Unlike previous editions, the Newcomers' section was not included in the Festival, but a similar selection was held to decree the three places reserved in the Big Artist section. The artists competing in the new format were selected through two separate contests: Standard section and Area Sanremo.

Standard selection
On 20 October 2021, the RAI commission for Sanremo Music Festival 2022 announced a list of 711 acts, but only 30 artists coming from all Italian regions – excluding Basilicata and Valle d'Aosta – and from abroad were selected in the first phase.

On 22 November 2021, the RAI commission announced the eight finalists.


 * Bais – "Che fine mi fai"
 * Esseho – "Arianna"
 * Martina Beltrami – "Parlo di te"
 * Matteo Romano – "Testa e croce"


 * Oli? – "Smalto e tinta"
 * Samia – "Fammi respirare"
 * Tananai – "Esagerata"
 * Yuman – "Mille notti"

Area Sanremo
After the auditions, a RAI commission – composed by Amadeus, Gianmarco Mazzi, Claudio Fasulo, Massimo Martelli and Leonardo de Amicis – identified 4 finalists for the competition among the 330 acts:


 * Destro – "Agosto di piena estate"
 * Littamè – "Cazzo avete da guardare"


 * Senza_Cri – "A me"
 * Vittoria – "California"

Final
On 15 December 2021, the twelve finalists performed their songs at Sanremo Casino in Sanremo, with the show Sanremo Giovani 2021 broadcast on Rai 1 and presented by Amadeus. The three winners of the night, i.e. Yuman, Tananai and Matteo Romano, participated in Sanremo 2022 with a new entry.

Big Artists
The traditional Big Artists section of the contest was merged with the Newcomers' section, and saw the participation of 25 artists, 22 being selected among established artists as before and 3 qualifying from Sanremo Giovani. The former 22, selected from 343 submissions received, were revealed on 4 December 2021, and also attended the night of Sanremo Giovani on 15 December, where their competing songs' titles were also made known.

First night
The first twelve artists each performed their song.

Second night
The remaining thirteen artists each performed their song.

Third night
All of the twenty-five artists performed their songs once again.

Fourth night
The artists each performed a cover of a song from the '60s, '70s, '80s, or '90s. They could either perform alone or duet with a guest performer.

Fifth night
All of the artists performed their songs one last time, with the top three moving on to the final round of voting.

Controversies
On 31 January 2022, director of Rai 1 Stefano Coletta publicly announced through a press conference that there would be no vaccine mandate for the Sanremo Music Festival 2022 singers as it would have breached the singers' right to privacy on their health status. This was highly criticized by the Italian public, resulting into a second declaration by Coletta, claiming that there was a "misunderstanding" and that the singers would also be required to show their proof of vaccination upon entrance at the festival.

Special guests
The special guests of Sanremo Music Festival 2022 included:


 * Singers / musicians: Arisa, Banda musicale della Guardia di Finanza, Cesare Cremonini, Colapesce & Dimartino, Ermal Meta, Gaia, Jovanotti, Laura Pausini, Malika Ayane, Måneskin, Marco Mengoni, Massimo Alberti, Meduza & Hozier, Mika, Orietta Berti, Pinguini Tattici Nucleari
 * Actors / comedians / directors / models: Anna Valle, Checco Zalone, Claudio Gioè, Filippo Scotti, Gaia Girace, Lino Guanciale, Margherita Mazzucco, Maurizio Lastrico, Nino Frassica, Raoul Bova, Rosario Fiorello
 * Sports people: Elisa Balsamo, Matteo Berrettini, Italy national rhythmic gymnastics team (Agnese Duranti, Alessia Maurelli, Daniela Mogurean, Martina Centofanti, Martina Santandrea)
 * Other persons or notable figures: Alessandro Cattelan, cast of Ballo, ballo, Fabio Rovazzi, Mara Venier, Martina Pigliapoco, Roberto Saviano, Sergio Japino

Local broadcast
Rai 1 and Rai Radio 2 brought the official broadcasts of the festival in Italy. The five evenings were also streamed online via the broadcaster's official website RaiPlay, which made it available in all member countries of the European Broadcasting Union, since the festival is broadcast on the Eurovision network.