Benidorm Fest 2026 Seeks Songs: New Prizes, Jury, and Voting Details Announced

A month has barely passed since the Eurovision final and the Benidorm Fest is already gearing up for its new edition, the fifth to be held in early 2026. The festival organisers are calling on artists to submit their songs, from which Spain's next representative will be chosen.

RTVE has announced that the application period for the Benidorm Fest 2026 will open this Thursday, June 5th at 10 am. Artists, composers, and producers can submit their songs for the fifth edition of the festival, with the deadline for submissions set for September 24th.

The Benidorm Fest has updated its rules for 2026, introducing significant changes aimed at enhancing the festival. With these updates, RTVE aims to adapt to the "current musical landscape and benefit participating artists."

One of the major new features will be the prize money. The winning song will receive a cash prize of €150,000 gross, in addition to the bronze microphone and the opportunity to represent Spain at Eurovision.

Of this amount, €100,000 will go to the performers and €50,000 to the songwriters. Furthermore, the earnings from the publishing rights of the winning song will be entirely for the authorship.

Both the two semi-finals and the grand final of the festival will feature a voting mechanism where 50% will come from the professional jury and the remaining 50% from the public vote.

The latter will be divided into 25% from the televote, consisting of phone calls and/or SMS, and free voting through the RTVE Play app.

The other 25% of the public vote will be from a demoscopic jury, composed of a sample of the Spanish population selected through statistical rules.

For the first time, the Benidorm Fest will have a creative team. It will be led by a professional from the sector who will be responsible for creating, coordinating, and supervising the stage development of each entry. The goal is for the festival as a whole to have greater aesthetic and technical coherence.

As has been the case since the festival's first edition, entries can, if they wish, have an external artistic team. In this case, the stage development will be carried out in collaboration with RTVE's creative direction.