Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017
overview of Finnish participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017

Finland was represented at the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 with the song "Blackbird", written and performed by Lasse Piirainen and Leena Tirronen under the name Norma John. The Finnish participating broadcaster, Yleisradio (Yle), organised the national final Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2017 in order to select its entry for the contest. Ten entries were selected to compete in the national final on 28 January 2017 where the 50/50 combination of votes from ten international jury groups and votes from the public selected "Blackbird" performed by Norma John as the winner.
Finland was drawn to compete in the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest which took place on 9 May 2017. Performing during the show in position 7, "Blackbird" was not announced among the top 10 entries of the first semi-final and therefore did not qualify to compete in the final. It was later revealed that Finland placed twelfth out of the 18 participating countries in the semi-final with 92 points.
Background
Prior to the 2017 contest, Yleisradio (Yle) had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest representing Finland fifty times since its first entry in 1961. It has won the contest once in 2006 with the song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" performed by Lordi. In 2016, "Sing It Away" performed by Sandhja failed to qualify Finland to the final, placing fifteenth in the semi-final.
As part of its duties as participating broadcaster, Yle organises the selection of its entry in the Eurovision Song Contest and broadcasts the event in the country.
“Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017” enters the record as overview of Finnish participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Finland, Eurovision and Song can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25303509. The first chronological checks are 2017, 1961, 2006 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.