Portugal: Napa wins Festival da Canção 2025 with "Deslocado"

The national selection season for Eurovision 2025 is officially a wrap as Portugal concludes its late Festival da Canção nights.

Along with the mentioned country, Sweden and San Marino have also concluded their selection tonight which means that, as of now, only the countries that opted for an internal selection are left to unveil their choices. Those should come in the upcoming week.

Concerning Portugal's Festival da Canção, the race was unpredictable but in the end, the band Napa ended up taking the trophy home with their song "Deslocado".

Tonight's event was held in RTP's studios in Lisbon and hosted by former Eurovision presenter Filomena Cautela and RTP's very own Vasco Palmeirim. The decision was split between a regional jury (divided in seven Portuguese regions) and the televote – each worth 50%.

As for interval acts, multilple took place tonight with the spotlight being Iolanda (Portugal 2024). Besides Portugal’s former Eurovision representative, Expresso Transantlântico, Tigerman, Ana Lua Caiano, Maria João (Festival da Canção 2024) and João Borsh (Festival da Canção 2024) also took the stage to pay homage to Nemo (Switzerland 2024). Huca (Festival da Canção 2024) took on Celine Dion’s winning song.

"Deslocado" was written by André Santos, Diogo Góis, Francisco Sousa, João Guilherme Gomes, João Lourenço Gomes, and João Rodrigues.

NAPA

Previously known as Men On The Couch, NAPA is a Portuguese band that comes from Madeira, an autonomous island in Portugal.

Back then they used to sing in English but since adopting the name NAPA, the band started writing and released music in Portuguese.

The band is composed by five members:

• João Guilherme Gomes (vocals, guitar);
• Francisco Sousa (guitar);
• João Rodrigues (drums);
• Diogo Góis (bass);
• Joáo Lourenço Gomes (piano).

Their influences range from Arctic Monkeys to Caetono Veloso to The Beatles even if their music style could better fit within the Romantic Pop genre.

They first released their first album back in 2019 followed by their sophomore record released in 2023.

Shortly after the release of "Deslocado", the song became extremely viral in TikTok as many people related to the message of the song.

Festival da Canção 2025

In order to decide which song and artist will travel to Basel (Switzerland) to represent Portugal in Eurovision 2025, RTP hosted its yearly song festival, Festival da Canção.

Not a lot of changes were introduced in this year's contest. The event continued to be held in RTP's studios in Lisbon and featured three shows: two Semi-finals and a Final.

Each Semi-final had six songs qualifying meaning there were 12 acts in the Final. Each show was hosted by different presenters.

• Semi-Final 1: 22 February 2025 (hosted by Jorge Gabriel and José Carlos Malato)
• Semi-Final 2: 1 March 2025 (hosted by Tânia Ribas de Oliveira and Sónia Araújo)
• Final: 8 March 2025 (hosted by Filomena Cautela and Vasco Palmeirim)

Portugal in Eurovision

Portugal has participated in the contest 55 times since 1964. It was a very bad start, as they managed to get zero points in their debut year.

Before Eurovision 2017, they had never won the contest, and had never made the top 5. In fact, Portugal held the record for most appearances in the contest without a win!

But that changed in 2017, when Salvador Sobral won with "Amar Pelos Dois."

Since the introduction of the Semi-finals in 2004, Portugal has only qualified for the Grand Final 9 out of 18 times.