Italy: Marco Mengoni is awarded the ‘Sanremo’ win

Rome: The 73rd ‘Festival di Sanremo’ has found its winner. On Saturday night, Marco Mengoni took the trophy with the song ‘Due Vite’, and will represent Italy at the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest.

A whopping 28 songs were performed a total of 3 times over 5 nights. But on the evening of Saturday 11 February, and into the early hours of Sunday morning, Sanremo selected the winner of its 2023 edition.

Marco Mengoni emerged victorious in the prestigious Festival di Sanremo, with the winning song Due Vite charming voters enough to award it the trophy.

The Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, in the Linguria region of Italy, played host once more to the latest edition of Festival di Sanremo. Italian broadcaster Rai aired the contest over 5 nights of shows, during which the 28 competing songs were performed 3 times each, intertwined with a varied programme of entertainment on each night.

Voting was made up of a public televote (34%), a jury comprising members of the press (33%) and a demoscopic jury of 300 members of the public (33%). This voting was conducted all through the week and then again at Saturday night’s final. The average between the votes obtained during the final show and those obtained during the previous shows determined an overall ranking of the 28 songs.

The Top 5 progressed to a ‘super final’, were performed once again, and Italy voted on its winner. Marco Mengoni had the honour of taking the win, 10 years after winning Sanremo in 2013. He will now represent Italy in Liverpool in May.

Italy is one of the 14 founding participants of the Eurovision Song Contest and arguably the country responsible for the entire Eurovision format! The original Contest was modelled on the popular Festival de Sanremo, which began in 1951 and continues to this day.

Italy has won the Eurovision Song Contest on 3 occasions. In 1964, Gigliola Cinquetti stormed the scoreboard in Copenhagen with Non Ho L’età, receiving nearly 3 times as many votes as the runner-up. Subsequently, the 1965 event was held in Naples.

In 1990, Toto Cutugno won the Contest with European unity anthem Insieme: 1992, taking us to Rome the following year where the 2 Italian winners, Toto and Gigliola, took on presenting duties. Allora!

The Italians struck gold again in 2021 with alt-rock band Måneskin. Their self-penned track Zitti E Buoni (English translation: ‘Shut Up and Behave’) won the Eurovision Song Contest and became a global streaming hit, along with their follow-up song I Wanna Be Your Slave.

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Sign up to the official Eurovision Song Contest newsletter, subscribe to the official podcast, and follow us across our social media channels – YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook – to be the first to find out how to secure tickets for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023.