Sanremo 2026, the regulations: here’s how many big names will be competing

The countdown to the 2026 Sanremo Festival, which will take place from 24 to 28 February, can officially begin. The regulations for the next edition of the event, the 76th, have been revealed. There will be 26 big names competing (last year they were originally 24, then increased to 30 but effectively became 29 with the exclusion of Emis Killa). To these must be added the 4 emerging players competing among the New Proposals, two from the official selections of Sanremo Giovani and two from the Area Sanremo route. There are few new features compared to the previous edition.

There will once again be three juries that will vote on the competing artists: Televoting by the public; Jury from the Press, TV and Web Room; Radio jury, with a percentage weight of 34, 33 and 33% respectively.

Moving on to the analysis of the individual evenings, on the first (Tuesday) the 26 Big/Champions will perform and the songs will be voted by the Jury of the Press, TV and Web Room.

During the second (Wednesday) 13 Big/Champions will perform, voted by the public – through Televoting – and by the Radio Jury, each with a weight of 50%. For the New Proposals category, the 4 artists will be divided into two couples and each couple will perform in a direct challenge. The artists will be judged by the public with televoting, by the Press, TV and Web Room Jury and by the Radio Jury. The two winning artists of the challenges will access the third evening.

Same procedure on the third evening (Thursday) for the Big/Campioni; for the New Proposals the final challenge will take place between the two artists who had access to the evening, the song most voted for by Televoting, by the Jury of the Press, TV and Web Room and by the Radio Jury will be proclaimed the winner of the category.

The “Cover” evening has been confirmed on Friday, with the winner: the Bigs, supported by a guest artist, will re-interpret an Italian or international published song and the votes of this competition will not influence the final result of the Festival. The covers will be evaluated by all three juries.

In the final of the fifth and last evening (Saturday) all 26 songs of the competing Bigs/Champions will be performed, voted by the three Juries. The result of this vote will be combined with that of the previous evenings (except that of the “Cover”), in order to determine a ranking of the songs/Artists.

New performance and voting for the top 5 ranked songs. The result will be added to the overall result of the previous ones in order to determine a new ranking referring to the 5 songs/Artists, thus awarding the prize of winner of the 76th edition of the Italian Song Festival.

The winning artist of Sanremo 2026 will be designated by Rai to represent Italy at the 2026 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.