Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018

Yle announced that they had internally selected Saara Aalto to represent Finland in Lisbon during a live streamed press conference on 7 November 2017, hosted by 2013 Finnish Eurovision entrant Krista Siegfrids and Mikko Silvennoinen.[3] In the press conference, the broadcaster also announced that her contest entry would be selected through Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2018 with three songs competing.[4] The competing songs along with their promotional music videos were presented on 9, 16 and 23 February 2018, respectively.[4]

Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2018 was the seventh edition of Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (UMK), the music competition that selects Finland's entries for the Eurovision Song Contest. The competition consisted of one final on 3 March 2018, held at the Espoo Metro Areena in Espoo and hosted by Krista Siegfrids and Mikko Silvennoinen.[5] The show was broadcast on Yle TV1 and online at yle.fi/umk as well as via radio with commentary in Swedish by Eva Frantz and Johan Lindroos on Yle X3M.[6] Three songs, all performed by Saara Aalto, competed and "Monsters" was selected as the winning song by a 50/50 combination of public votes and eight international jury groups from the United Kingdom, Iceland, France, Estonia, Italy, Switzerland, Norway and Portugal.[7] The viewers and the juries each had a total of 240 points to award. Each jury group distributed their points as follows: 8, 10 and 12 points. The viewer vote was based on the percentage of votes each song achieved through the following voting methods: telephone, SMS and online voting. For example, if a song gained 10% of the viewer vote, then that entry would be awarded 10% of 240 points rounded to the nearest integer: 24 points.

Detailed International Jury Votes
Draw	Song									Total
1	"Monsters"	12	10	12	10	12	10	12	10	88
2	"Domino"	10	12	10	12	8	12	8	12	84
3	"Queens"	8	8	8	8	10	8	10	8	68
International Jury Spokespersons
– William Lee Adams – Hera Björk – Edoardo Grassi – Lenna Kuurmaa – Kabir Naidoo – Reto Peritz – Stig Karlsen – Suzy

Finland performed fifteenth in the first semi-final, following the entry from Greece and preceding the entry from Armenia. At the end of the night, Finland were one of the ten countries announced as having qualified for the grand final, their first qualification since 2014. Following the semi-final, Saara Aalto joined the other qualifiers in a press conference in which they drew to see which half of the final they would compete in. Finland was drawn to perform in the second half of the grand final (Aalto joked that it continued her "curse of twos" - she finished second in The X Factor UK and in two Eurovision pre-selections, competed in the second half of the first semi-final, and were the second-to-last country announced as qualifying).It was later revealed that Finland placed tenth in the semi-final, receiving a total of 108 points: 73 points from the televoting and 35 points from the juries.

Finland performed 17th in the grand final, following Australia and preceding Bulgaria. At the end of the night, they received 46 points, finishing in twenty-fifth place. So, as it happened, the "curse of twos" continued - the song finished second-to-last.

Voting during the three shows involves each country awarding two sets of points from 1-8, 10 and 12: one from their professional jury and the other from televoting. Each nation's jury will consist of five music industry professionals who are citizens of the country they represent, with their names published before the contest to ensure transparency. The jury judges each entry based on: vocal capacity; the stage performance; the song's composition and originality; and the overall impression by the act. In addition, no member of a national jury was permitted to be related in any way to any of the competing acts in such a way that they cannot vote impartially and independently. The individual rankings of each jury member as well as the nation's televoting results will be released shortly after the grand final.

The following five members comprised the Finnish jury:[10]

• Petri Kari Olavi Laaksonen (Petri Laaksonen) – Chairperson – singer-songwriter, composer of the Finnish entries in the 1985 and 1987 Contests
• Laura Marketta Vähähyyppä – radio DJ, journalist
• Aija Puurtinen – Doctor of Music, singer, musician
• Matias Veikko Olavi Keskiruokanen – producer, composer
• Vilma Alina Lähteenmäki (Vilma Alina) – singer-songwriter

Split voting results from Finland (Semi-final 1)
Draw	Country	Jury							Televote
		L. Marketta	A. Puurtinen	P. Laaksonen	M. Keskiruokanen	V. Alina	Average Rank	Points	Rank	Points
01	Azerbaijan	10	15	10	13	16	14		16
02	Iceland	13	12	6	12	9	13		13
03	Albania	4	7	4	16	6	5	6	10	1
04	Belgium	6	3	8	7	12	6	5	14
05	Czech Republic	9	14	13	8	7	12		4	7
06	Lithuania	14	6	9	6	11	9	2	9	2
07	Israel	1	1	3	1	1	1	12	2	10
08	Belarus	17	17	12	18	18	17		8	3
09	Estonia	18	13	18	10	13	16		1	12
10	Bulgaria	2	2	2	2	5	2	10	12
11	Macedonia	16	18	17	17	17	18		18
12	Croatia	12	16	16	14	10	15		17
13	Austria	3	4	1	3	4	3	8	3	8
14	Greece	11	10	5	11	15	11		11
15	Finland
16	Armenia	7	11	7	5	14	8	3	15
17	Switzerland	8	9	11	9	8	10	1	7	4
18	Ireland	5	8	15	15	3	7	4	5	6
19	Cyprus	15	5	14	4	2	4	7	6	5

Split voting results from Finland (final)
Draw	Country	Jury							Televote
		L. Marketta	A. Puurtinen	P. Laaksonen	M. Keskiruokanen	V. Alina	Average Rank	Points	Rank	Points
01	Ukraine	21	21	21	20	19	23		19
02	Spain	22	14	18	7	16	15		24
03	Slovenia	23	24	25	24	25	25		22
04	Lithuania	13	13	19	8	15	14		14
05	Austria	5	2	2	6	7	4	7	8	3
06	Estonia	20	12	17	21	22	18		1	12
07	Norway	10	16	7	16	23	13		11
08	Portugal	24	15	24	22	14	20		23
09	United Kingdom	11	17	13	18	18	16		21
10	Serbia	19	19	22	23	20	24		25
11	Germany	9	8	8	11	11	10	1	16
12	Albania	14	11	11	13	10	12		17
13	France	16	6	4	5	1	6	5	7	4
14	Czech Republic	15	7	12	12	13	11		6	5
15	Denmark	4	20	3	15	9	8	3	2	10
16	Australia	25	22	16	14	21	21		18
17	Finland
18	Bulgaria	2	5	1	4	6	2	10	20
19	Moldova	18	25	14	19	24	22		13
20	Sweden	3	4	6	3	3	3	8	12
21	Hungary	12	23	23	25	12	17		3	8
22	Israel	1	1	10	1	2	1	12	4	7
23	Netherlands	17	18	20	17	17	19		9	2
24	Ireland	7	10	15	9	8	9	2	15
25	Cyprus	6	3	9	2	5	5	6	10	1
26	Italy	8	9	5	10	4	7	4	5	6