Canada Eurovision 2027 starts taking shape on Tuesday, when CBC and Radio-Canada name the finalists competing to become the country’s first Eurovision act.
What CBC Reveals on Tuesday
The names come at a press conference at the CBC and Radio-Canada offices in Toronto on Tuesday, October 27, at 3 p.m. ET, which is 12 p.m. PT. It streams live on CBC Gem and ICI TOU.TV in Canada, and on YouTube for viewers watching from outside the country. What gets revealed is the shortlist: the finalists in Canada’s Choice, the national selection CBC and Radio-Canada built to choose the country’s first Eurovision entry.
What does not happen on Tuesday matters just as much. There are no live performances and no songs. The finalists will not present any music at the reveal itself. Instead, introduction videos for each finalist go up on the Eurovision Song Contest Canada website once the press conference ends, and the real race between them starts from there.
The finalists come out of a submissions window that ran from August 31 to September 9. CBC and Radio-Canada went looking for an established performer with the stage craft to hold one of the biggest live audiences in music, and the names read out on Tuesday are the acts that made it through that filter.
How Canada Eurovision 2027 Picks Its Act
Canada’s Choice picks the artist first and the song second. Performers, and at least one credited songwriter on the eventual entry, have to be Canadian citizens or permanent residents aged 18 or older. Whoever wins sings live in Bulgaria with no lip sync, no pitch correction and no Auto-Tune, which is exactly why the search leaned toward proven live performers.
CBC and Radio-Canada have been open that a televised national final was not possible on this year’s timeline, so the winner is decided another way: a public digital vote through the broadcaster’s website, combined with the verdict of a music industry jury. The winner is expected to be named this fall, and the broadcasters have said future editions of the selection may look bigger.
Once the act is chosen, the song gets built. The winner works with CBC and Radio-Canada and with music industry professionals to write and shape the entry, and the finished song will carry both English and French. If the winning act is not bilingual, a guest collaborator can step in for the other language. Canada’s head of delegation, Jennifer Dettman, leads the team taking the act to Europe.
The destination is the 71st Eurovision Song Contest at Arena Burgas in Burgas, Bulgaria, where the semi-finals run on May 11 and 13, 2027 and the grand final lands on May 15. Bulgaria hosts after DARA won the 2026 contest in Vienna with “Bangaranga”. Canada gets no free pass to the final, either: the debut act has to qualify out of its semi-final like every other country in its half of the draw.
Why Canada Is Debuting Now
The road here moved fast. Canada’s fall 2025 federal budget included working with CBC and Radio-Canada to explore a Eurovision bid, with Prime Minister Mark Carney reportedly involved personally. On June 25, 2026, the European Broadcasting Union’s general assembly in Prague revised its own statutes and voted CBC and Radio-Canada in as a full member. On Canada Day, July 1, the two sides confirmed the debut together.
CBC and Radio-Canada president and CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard said it plainly in that Canada Day announcement:
“On this Canada Day, as we celebrate with Canadians across the country and around the world the richness and diversity of Canadian culture, we’re so excited to confirm that we’re bringing the world’s largest live music event to Canadians. Our participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, starting next year in Bulgaria, will allow Canadian talent to be showcased on one of the most storied music stages in the world.”
Canada is the first country to debut at Eurovision since Australia in 2015, and the audience is already here. Canadians finished in the top three of the contest’s Rest of the World vote in 2026 and were among the largest ticket buyers outside Europe for the Vienna shows. The 70th contest reached 132 million people across its measured television markets, numbers no Canadian stage can offer a homegrown act.
Canadian voices have also been on that stage for decades, just under other flags. Céline Dion won the whole contest for Switzerland in 1988 with “Ne partez pas sans moi”, and singers from Lara Fabian to La Zarra have carried Canadian roots into Eurovision finals for other countries. Starting next May, the flag on the scoreboard is Canada’s own.
What It Means for Canadian Artists
For Canadian artists, Tuesday is the start of a new lane. Eurovision is the largest live music event on the planet, and a debut year puts a Canadian act in front of an audience that domestic award shows cannot match. The artist-first format rewards exactly the skill Canadian touring acts build for years: singing live, full out, with no safety net.
The bilingual shape of the entry matters too. A song that carries English and French puts francophone artists inside the national story from the very first year, and it gives Quebec’s deep bench of performers a real route to the biggest stage in Europe. The same door stands open for hip hop and R&B acts: Eurovision lineups have made room for rap verses and club records before, and an act that can do it live fits the brief CBC and Radio-Canada wrote.
What happens next is a short runway. Meet the finalists on Tuesday, watch the public vote and the jury do their work this fall, then follow the winning act as the song gets built toward Burgas. iimiTV will track every step of Canada Eurovision 2027, starting with the names on Tuesday afternoon.
