After weeks of fandom speculation - SBS has announced they will use Internal Selection to decide Australia's 2023 Eurovision participant instead of a National Final competition.
It appears that recent contact negotiations delayed the Australia Decides announcement at SBS Upfronts two weeks ago.
A spokesperson from SBS released a statement today saying:
"We are thrilled to confirm that Australia will once again compete in the 67th Eurovision Song Contest next year, with hosts Myf Warhurst and Joel Creasey at the helm. However, after three years of celebrating and working with local music artists through our Eurovision selection show, Eurovision - Australia Decides, we’ve made the difficult decision not to go ahead with the program in 2023.
Over the past few months, we have been exploring ways we could deliver the event to Australian audiences next year however, a variety of factors contributed to us coming to this decision.
We are proud to continue to be the home of the Eurovision Song Contest and we look forward to celebrating 40 years of broadcasting Eurovision to all Australians in the coming year."
From 2019 - 2022, SBS staged the National Final 'Eurovision: Australia Decides' which gave us the likes of Sheldon Riley, Montaigne and inaugural winner Kate Miller-Heidke.
Prior to this, Australia utilised Internal Selection to select artists from 2015 - 2018. These included: Jessica Mauboy, Isaiah Firebrace, Dami Im and Guy Sebastian.
As soon as there is more news on Australia's selection of the artist and song for Eurovision 2023 we will bring you all details.
For continued updates on all Eurovision Song Contest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. All the links can be found at: https://linktr.ee/aussievisionnet