Finland’s Contest for New Music UMK to be held in Tampere at Nokia Arena on 8 February 2025 – record number of song entries submitted this year

The Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle’s Contest for New Music UMK is one of the cornerstones of Finnish pop culture. UMK has gained a solid reputation in Finland and amongst Eurovision fans all around the world as a platform for the most exciting new pop phenomena and fresh music in Finland. Last year’s UMK broke previous records once again: nearly 20,000 people witnessed the UMK show live at the Nokia Arena in Tampere, 1.9 million Finns followed the show on television and almost a million international viewers joined the UMK fever via the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s streaming service Yle Areena. 

The winner of UMK, Finland’s biggest music show, will go from a Finnish audience of millions to perform to an international audience of hundreds of millions in the Eurovision Song Contest, the world’s biggest live music event held in Basel, Switzerland, from 13 to 17 May, 2025.

The UMK party will take over three floors of the Nokia Arena starting at 6pm on 8 February. After the UMK25 live show, the night will continue at the UMK after-party until 3am. 

Anssi Autio, UMK’s Executive Producer comments: “The UMK show, which has grown into an arena-scale event, exceeded expectations in many respects last year. There are high expectations for this year’s event, both among the UMK production team and certainly among the audience. Tampere proved to be a brilliant UMK host city last year. This year, we will be working even more closely with the city, which is expected to have a very boisterous UMK week in early February. 

Tickets for the UMK25 event will be available on Thursday 3 October at 9 a.m. at lippu.fi/umk. 

A record number of songs submitted to the contest – audience juries participated in the selection process

UMK’s popularity has also grown year on year among artists. This year, 485 songs were submitted to the contest, which is a record during the current format of UMK. The UMK25 artists will be announced on Wednesday 8 January 2025 and the songs and music videos will be released one at a time on weekdays from 9 to 17 January 2025.

This year, changes were made to the selection process for UMK participants. In addition to the professional jury, consisting of music industry professionals, chaired by YleX’s Head of Music Tapio Hakanen, five audience juries were invited to select the artists and songs for the UMK25 show. The number of high-quality songs with great potential submitted to the contest has increased every year, and the juries were expanded to gain an even broader perspective on the final line-up.    

The quality of the songs submitted to the competition dazzled the members of all juries, and selecting the seven finalists was not an easy task.  

Tapio Hakanen, Chair of the professional jury said: “This year, it was particularly emotional to go through the huge number of great songs that showed the passion, skill and creativity of Finnish music creators. This season, UMK will see both a great continuation of Finnish pop tradition and a star of the future, waiting for their opportunity to shine bright. We will get to witness energetic band energy, hear German language in an UMK song, dance to the beat of an epic dance banger and be moved by one of the finest ballads in UMK’s history. The line-up is crowned by a song that makes you dance and cry at the same time.      

Media accreditation for UMK25 will be opened in November-December 2024. 

Material for the media:
UMK25 event trailer
UMK25 media folder
Yle.fi/umk
Lippu.fi/umk