Romania was represented at Eurovision Song Contest 2009 in Moscow, Russia by Elena Gheorghe with "The Balkan Girls" after she won the national final, Selecţia Naţională 2009.

The Romanian broadcaster, Televiziunea Română (TVR), confirmed that they would continue to hold a national final, Selecţia Naţională, to select the Romanian entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest. Two semi-finals were held before the final of the contest on 31 January 2009. Composers were able to submit songs to TVR from 15 November to 22 December, however only Romanian composers were allowed to take part in the competition.

Past Romanian Eurovision entrants confirmed their wish to enter the contest again, including Luminita Anghel and Mihai Trăistariu, who gave Romania their best results at the contest, 3rd and 4th place at the 2005 and 2006 contests respectively.

After TVR extended the deadline of competing entries, it had been rumoured that the broadcaster had received very few extries for the contest, with as little as five entries being reported. However, TVR rebuked this claim, confirming that they had received over 250 entries for the contest. 24 entries were selected by a special panel to compete in the two semi-finals on 8 January 2009, and were released on 9 January.

The first semi-final was held on 27 January 2009. From the 12 songs that competed in the semi-final, only six qualified to the final on 31 January. The qualifiers were decided by 50% jury voting and 50% televoting.

From this semi-final, Popas Band, the Blaxy Girls, ZERO, Tabassco, Dalma Kovács and Tina qualified to the final.

The second semi-final will be held on 29 January 2009. Again, only six songs will qualify to the final on 31 January from the 12 competing entries. The qualifiers will be decided by 50% jury voting and 50% televoting.

The six qualifiers to the final from this semi-final were Costi, Red Blonde, Elena Gheorghe, Cătălin Josan, Alin Nica and IMBA. They will join the six qualifiers from the first semi-final.

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Wikipedia