Russia participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens, Greece. The Russian entry was selected internally by the Russian broadcaster Channel One Russia (C1R). Dima Bilan represented Russia with the song "Never Let You Go", which qualified from the semi-final and placed 2nd in the final, scoring 248 points.

On 26 January 2006, C1R officially announced it would be accepting entries from interested artists and composers until 1 March 2006. C1R aired television advertisements calling for entries that conformed to the official contest rules and that the selection would be internally decided by a professional jury.

Following the 1 March submission deadline, several artists were reported as main contenders in the media. Those artists included Dima Bilan, who submitted two songs: "Never Let You Go" and "Lady Flame", Jasmine with the song "Desperate Foreigner", Varvara with the song "We'll Be There" and Ariana with the song "Don't Go". On 7 March 2006, C1R held a press conference that announced Dima Bilan as the selected representative for Russia. Out of Dima Bilan's submitted entries, the selection panel decided to keep "Never Let You Go" as a backup entry while requesting that Bilan's writing team compose a new song for the contest. Only 10 days were left until the official entry had to be submitted to the European Broadcasting Union and efforts to compose a new entry were eventually dropped and "Never Let You Go" was selected as the Russian entry.

The jury panel that selected the Russian entry included Konstantin Ernst (general manager of C1R), Yuriy Aksyuta (music director of C1R), Ilya Bachurin (MTV Russia), Alexander Polesitskiy, (Europa Plus), Vladimir Matetsky (composer), Viktor Drobysh (composer) and Larisa Dolina (singer).

Since Russia did not place in the top 10 countries (excluding the Big Four) in the 2005 Contest, Russia was required to compete in the semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 on 18 May 2006. On 21 March 2006, Russia was drawn to perform 13th in the semi-final, following Poland and preceding Turkey.

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