escgo! proudly announces the launch of SongHunt 2017! The first heat will be launched on Sunday 29 January – and the brand new Last Chance poll is already underway!

It’s the third season of our annual poll marathon aimed at finding the best national final song of the year.

Once again, the 96 most popular national final songs from around Europe according to our chatters will take part in eight heats, followed by four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and the grand final. Each vote will take the form of an online poll consisting of 12 songs, and you’ll have up to three votes (one in the final) that you can use to support your favourites.

This year we’re tweaking a few things to try and make the SongHunt process even better. You can find out about the changes below. (And if you need a reminder or you’re new to the whole thing, you can click through to read all about how SongHunt worked last year and in 2015.)

So what’s new?

1. Chat results are only counted in national final shows…

When working out the qualifiers for each SongHunt heat, we used to count all the votes cast in our chat for every show, whether a Latvian quarter-final or a Melodifestivalen grand final, regardless of how many of our chatters were watching and voting along.

This year, we will be compiling the same rolling list of the chat’s favourite songs as the basis for determining the SongHunt heats, but we will only be recording and counting the votes cast in the chat during the actual national final shows. (And the winners of the finals will be excluded, too – but that’s the same as last year.)

10 of the 12 songs in each SongHunt heat will be the most popular songs from the rolling chat result list.

2. …but all songs get a Last Chance

Sometimes the best songs don’t even make it through to their own national final. And sometimes our chatters give a low score to a song you love. Frustrating, isn’t it? Well, from this year, all songs will get another chance to have their moment in SongHunt!

We’ll be running a separate Last Chance poll throughout the entire season with the aim of finding your favourites among those songs that were “robbed” of a place in their respective national final, or that simply received a low chat score and so might not reach a SongHunt heat the regular way.

You can nominate a song for inclusion in the poll at any time after it’s been eliminated from its national selection process, whether in a heat or by losing in the final. It’s a continuous rolling poll, so you can submit a nomination or vote for your favourite every single day. Each week, the current top two from the Last Chance poll will find their way into the next SongHunt heat. So there’ll be plenty of opportunities for your favourites to get their deserved moment in the spotlight!

2 of the 12 songs in each SongHunt heat will be the most popular songs in the rolling Last Chance poll.

See how it works – and make sure your favourites get their Last Chance – here!

3. A new schedule

After experimenting with keeping our SongHunt going all the way through the year in 2016, we have decided to adopt a much more compact schedule this year.

Each individual poll, from the heats through to the final, will be open for exactly one week without a break in between. The final will coincide with Eurovision week and will close on the Sunday after the ESC grand final. The results will be revealed in a new event in the chat.

See all dates and links at the end of this page.

4. Chat Awards

The SongHunt winner was previously announced as the “Song of the Year” at our annual Chat Awards. Although SongHunt 2017 will now be completed earlier in the year, it will still have an influence on our “Song of the Year” award. The SongHunt result will count for 50% of the award vote, with the remaining 50% determined by a speed vote in the chat at the start of the Chat Awards 2017 event. In other words, the “Song of the Year” winner will reflect both how we felt about the songs in May and how we still feel about them as 2017 comes to a close!

That’s all you need to know. All that remains is for you to make your voice heard:

• Visit the chat during national finals and vote on the songs
• If a song you like deserves another chance, nominate it in the Last Chance poll
• Vote for your favourites in the Last Chance poll
• Vote in the SongHunt heats, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the grand final

Here we go again – let’s find the best national final song of the season!

Relevant links and dates:

Chat results overview

Last Chance poll