The final of UMK 2026 broke records in Finland for both viewing figures and the number of votes cast.<\/p>\n
An average of 1.8 million viewers watched the final of UMK 2026 live on Yle TV1, reaching an audience of 2.5 million viewers. Average audience figures grew by 320,000 viewers compared to 2025, with the audience reach growing by 230,000 viewers. Last night\u2019s final was watched by more viewers<\/a> than the Eurovision 2025 Grand Final, in which Erika Vikman and KAJ were both competing.<\/p>\n In total, 446,681 votes were cast during the final of UMK 2026. This is an increase of 104,138 votes compared to 2025. Of these, 355,553 votes were cast from the Yle app for free, while 91,128 votes were cast by phone and SMS. Producer Anssi Autio commented:<\/p>\n \u201cIf big moments like the Winter Olympics unite Finns in terms of sports, UMK has risen to the same category in terms of culture and music. I am really happy to see how many people gather around new Finnish music and the show built around it. UMK is an excellent example of how Yle\u2019s cultural mission is made a reality every day in many ways\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, Yle has released the members of the international juries that determined 25% of the results in the final, the jurors were:<\/p>\n United Kingdom<\/p>\n Kabir Naidoo Netherlands<\/p>\n Eleonora de Jager Montenegro<\/p>\n Gojko Berkuljan Spain<\/p>\n Merc\u00e8 Llorens Malta<\/p>\n Lyndsay Pace \u2013 Competed in MESC 2024 Denmark<\/p>\n Phillip Jensen Austria<\/p>\n Patrick Stelzl UMK 2026 took place at the Nokia Arena in Tampere. The show will be hosted by Sami Sykk\u00f6, Jorma Uotinen, and Jasmin Beloued. The show was opened by Erika Vikman (Finland 2025) and JJ (Eurovision 2025 winner for Austria. During the interval, there were also guest performances from Sonja Lumme (Finland 1985), Turisti, Averagekidluke, Ares and Elastinen.<\/p>\n A total of seven artists competed in UMK 2026. The results were decided by seven international juries (25%) and public voting (75%). <\/p>\n The results were as follows:<\/p>\n ArtistSongJuryPublic VoteTotalResultKomiat\u201cLululai\u201d40761163rdEtta\u201cMillion Dollar Smile\u201d1230426thKiki\u201cRakkaudenkipee\u201d2814427thAntti Paalanen\u201cTakatukka\u201d581522102ndCHACHI\u201cCherry Cake\u201d3267994thSinikka Monte\u201cReady to Leave\u201d4651975thLinda Lampenius x Pete Parkkonen\u201cLiekinheitin\u201d784925701st<\/p>\n Linda Lampenius x Pete Parkkonen will perform in the first half of the first semi-final on May 12.<\/p>\n Source: Yle<\/a> \/ Yle<\/a><\/p>\n Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest+<\/p>\n Finland first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1961. They debuted alongside Spain and Yugoslavia. Finland has finished last in the contest on 10 occasions and has received \u2018nul points\u2019 three times. It wasn\u2019t until 2006 that Finland won the Eurovision Song Contest. Lordi represented the country in Athens with the song \u201cHard Rock Hallelujah\u201d scoring 292 points, a record total at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final of UMK 2026 broke records in Finland for both viewing figures and the number of votes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,33958,56,138917,54,55],"class_list":["post-452101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-headline","tag-uk","tag-umk-2026","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nTony Aguilar \u2013 Spanish commentator at Eurovision and Junior Eurovision
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