Benidorm Fest: Spain's selection, and a participation still undecided

Spain's selection show has a provisional calendar for 2027, and the country does not yet have a confirmed place in the contest it is selecting for. That is the unusual part, and it is worth being precise about.

A national final with no confirmed contest entry

Benidorm Fest is the televised competition RTVE, Spain's public broadcaster, uses to choose its Eurovision entry. For 2027 the dates that have circulated come from an RTVE sponsorship document: a plan put in front of potential sponsors, not an announcement of the show. Every date in it is provisional.

At the same time, Spain's participation in Eurovision 2027 is not confirmed. RTVE has said its position is unchanged and that Benidorm Fest goes ahead regardless. At the time of writing our tracker lists Spain as still to be announced. That page, not this one, is where the current status lives, and it will change before this article does.

So the calendar below describes a selection that is planned. It does not describe an entry that exists.

The provisional calendar

Every row is marked provisional because every row is. RTVE has not confirmed these dates, and a sponsorship document is a plan that exists to be adjusted. If a date moves, the calendar will move with it, and this article will be corrected rather than quietly rewritten.

There is a second reason to hold the dates loosely. A national final with a confirmed Eurovision entry has a fixed endpoint: the winner goes to the contest. A national final held while participation is undecided does not, and what happens to its winner if Spain does not enter is a question RTVE has not answered in public. We are not going to answer it for them.

Spain's record

Spain first entered in 1961 and has won twice, in consecutive years, which is rarer than it sounds.

The second of those carries an asterisk that belongs to the whole contest rather than to Spain. In Madrid in 1969, four countries finished level on 18 points, there was no tie-break rule, and all four were declared winners: France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. Spain's record says two wins and that is correct, but one of them was shared four ways, in the year Spain was hosting because of the other. Our archive stores each country's wins as a fact rather than deriving them from a single winner's name, precisely because of that row.

There have been no wins since. Every country's all-time record is on the history page.

The Big Five

Spain is one of the Big Five, with France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom: the five broadcasters that contribute most to the EBU's budget, whose entries go straight to the grand final without qualifying from a semi-final.

That matters here for one reason. A Big Five country's place in the final is a consequence of its participation, not a substitute for it. Pre-qualification does not put Spain in the field; an application to the EBU does, and whether RTVE makes one is the thing that is not settled.

What is not settled for 2027

Whether Spain takes part in Eurovision 2027 is not confirmed; the tracker holds the current status. Every Benidorm Fest 2027 date above is provisional, and none has been confirmed by RTVE. The participating artists and songs have not been announced. If you read a firm Spanish date before any of that changes, our guide to reading a Eurovision rumour explains what to check first.