Meet the five acts competing to be Canada's first Eurovision entrant

TORONTO —

Five artists from British Columbia to New Brunswick are competing in a public vote to become Canada's first entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest, after the finalists were revealed Tuesday at CBC Toronto. ¹²

The finalists are Quebec pop singer William Cloutier, Acadian singer-songwriter Josiane, Montreal-born dance-pop artist Rêve, Ottawa's Talk and B.C. singer-songwriter Tyler Shaw. The 2027 contest will be held in Bulgaria next May. ¹³

Canada is the first new country to join Eurovision since Australia in 2015. More than 130 million viewers in 35 countries watched the most recent edition. ¹

How the vote works

Canadians can watch the performances at cbc.ca/eurovision and vote up to 10 times until 11:59 p.m. PT on Thursday, Nov. 5. The winner will be announced by December, and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP is overseeing the vote count. ¹³

The field was narrowed from 325 applications submitted between Aug. 31 and Sept. 9. CBC/Radio-Canada music teams picked 15, and a jury of five music professionals and the executive vice-presidents of CBC and Radio-Canada chose the final five at an Oct. 8 meeting in Toronto. ¹³

The contenders

Talk (Nicholas Durocher) won the 2024 Juno Award for breakthrough artist after his hit Run Away to Mars and has more than two million monthly listeners on Spotify. “I really think this opportunity was built for me, and I'm ready to win,” he said at a news conference. ²

Rêve (Briannah Donolo), a Juno winner now based in Toronto, blends pop and R&B with '90s Eurodance. She called being selected “the greatest honour of my life.” ¹²

Cloutier, from Victoriaville, Que., won Star Académie in 2021 and has played Johnny Rockfort in Starmania more than 360 times in Europe and Quebec. “It's a dream,” he told CBC News. ¹³

Josiane (Josiane Comeau), from Dieppe, N.B., won La Voix in 2020 and moves between French and English with Chiac phrasing. Her song Lose It All has passed six million streams. ¹³

Shaw, born in Richmond, B.C., broke through with Kiss Goodnight in 2012, and his version of Gayle's abcdefu has more than 100 million Spotify streams. “I feel like I've been literally training for this for the past 14 years,” he said. ¹²

Sources

1. CBC News: Meet Canada's 5 Eurovision finalists
2. CBC Music: Get to know Canada's 5 Eurovision finalists through their music (Kelsey Adams, Natalie Harmsen)
3. CBC Media Centre: Eurovision Song Contest 2027: It's up to the public to choose Canada's representative

This article was reported and written by Sofia Lam and edited by Daniel Okafor. It draws on the sources above, which are credited in the text. Our standards · Report an error