Italy: Francesco Gabbani wins Sanremo and goes to Eurovision

Francesco Gabbani is the winner of the prestigous Sanremo Festival 2017 in Italy, with the song ‘Occidentali’s karma’. With that victory he also got the first right to go to the Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev, which he decided to use. Together with his dancing gorilla!

Last year Stadio, the winner of the annual music competition in Italy on which Eurovision was based in the 50’s, decided not go to Stockholm. The group was replaced by Francesca Michielin, who also took part in Sanremo last year.

San Remo winners

In recent years we also saw some Sanremo winners that dared to go to Eurovision after victory, like Marco Mengoni in 2013 and of course Il Volo in 2015. They ended up in third place in Vienna and even won the televote by a large margin. Francesco Gabbani might also do very well in Kiev, based upon the reactions whole week to his happy song, including a dancing man in a gorilla suit next to him.

These were the participants in the final in running order (final ranking in brackets):

Elodie – Tutta colpa mia (8th)
Michele Zarrillo – Mani nelle mani (11th)
Sergio Sylvestre – Con te (6th)
Fiorella Mannoia – Che sia Benedetta (2nd)
Fabrizio Moro – Portami via (7th)
Alessio Bernabei – Nel mezzo di un applauso (15th)
Marco Masini – Spostato di un secondo (13th)
Paola Turci – Fatti bella per te (5th)
Bianca Atzei – Ora esisti solo tu (9th)
Francesco Gabbani – Occidentali’s Karma (winner)
Chiara – Nessun posto è casa mia (14th)
Clementino – Ragazzi fuori (16th)
Ermal Meta – Vietato morire (3rd)
Lodovica Comello – Il cielo non mi basta (12th)
Samuel – Vedrai (10th)
Michele Bravi – Il diario degli errori (4th)