Canada Picks Five Finalists for Its First-Ever Eurovision Entry — and the Vote Is Open Now

Canada has never sent an act to the Eurovision Song Contest. That changes next May — and as of this weekend, the job of choosing who carries the flag is in the hands of the Canadian public. CBC/Radio-Canada has named the five finalists competing to become the country's first-ever Eurovision entry, and the vote to pick between them is open now.

The finalists, announced on 27 October, are William Cloutier, Josiane, Reve, TALK and Tyler Shaw — five acts chosen to carry a genuinely historic brief: the first Canadian performance on the Eurovision stage, at the 2027 contest in Burgas, Bulgaria.

The five survived a real funnel. CBC received 325 submissions during a window that ran from 31 August to 9 September, and a jury convened in Toronto on 8 October to sift the entries down to the shortlist that now faces the public. For a first-year selection organised at speed, the scale of the response suggests Canadian artists have been waiting a long time for this particular door to open.

The campaign steps up today. CBC airs a live special, 'Horizon Eurovision', this afternoon — Sunday 1 November, at 4pm ET — in which all five finalists perform, giving voters their first full look at the acts asking to represent them on the biggest stage most of them will ever play.

The voting mechanics are simple, and generous. The ballot is open at CBC.ca/eurovision, each person may vote up to 10 times, and voting closes on 5 November at 11:59pm Pacific. The winning act will be announced in December, giving the chosen artist the winter to build the staging, the story and the song's second life before Burgas.

The prize is a place in contest history. Canada's appearance in Burgas next May will make it the first brand-new participating country at Eurovision since Australia was admitted in 2015. Australia's path — from invited newcomer to established contest regular — is the obvious template, but no two debuts are alike, and Canada's will be judged on its own song, its own staging and its own nerve.

For the contest, a Canadian debut is a landmark in Eurovision's long drift beyond its own name: a competition founded for European broadcasters that has become a global television event. For Canada, it is a shop window like no other — one song, performed live before one of the world's largest entertainment audiences, with a whole music industry watching from home.

The announcement, though, has not landed without argument. The shortlist drew criticism for featuring no Indigenous or Black artists among the five finalists — an objection led publicly by Indigenous singer-songwriter Shawnee Kish, who made the case on Instagram and gave the backlash its most prominent voice.

CBC's Head of Delegation, Jennifer Dettman, responded to the criticism by pointing to the timeline constraints under which this first selection was organised — a debut assembled quickly, from an open submission window in late summer to a televised final and public vote in November. Whether that explanation settles the argument will matter beyond this year: how CBC answers it is likely to shape the structure of Canadian selections to come.

The structure of the vote will shape the race as much as the performances do. Ten votes per person rewards the acts with the most organised and motivated fan bases, and it turns the days between tonight's special and Thursday's deadline into a genuine campaign — part election, part chart battle. Each finalist has a different route to those votes: an established audience, a regional stronghold, a viral moment from the live show. Tonight's performances are the one moment all five get to make their case to the whole country at once, on equal footing.

The finalists, meanwhile, are already campaigning. Reve has released a new video, 'Church Of Sound', tied directly to her finalist run — an early sign of how seriously the five acts are treating a vote that could redirect their careers, and of how modern Eurovision selections are now fought as much on feeds and streams as on the night itself.

It makes for an instructive contrast with this weekend's other big televised song-contest story. In Britain, The Voice UK crowned its winner through its studio audience because the series is pre-recorded — a decision that drew its own wave of criticism from viewers. Canada has gone the opposite way, putting its faith in a full public vote on a flagship night of live music television, in the tradition of the great British variety stages that Eurovision itself grew out of.

By December, one of William Cloutier, Josiane, Reve, TALK and Tyler Shaw will be able to say something no Canadian artist has ever said: I am my country's Eurovision act. The performances are today, the ballot closes on Thursday night Pacific time, and a contest that began in 1956 is about to gain its newest flag.