Eurovision Dream Contest 2011

The Eurovision Dream Contest 2011 is going to be the first edition of the Eurovision Dream Contest. The event will take place at the Geusselt (MVV) Stadium in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The final was originally planned to take place on the evening of 4 July 2011; however, due to organization needs and the steadily increasing number of participants, the final has been rescheduled and two semifinals have been planned.

The semifinals will take place on 29 July 2011 and 30 July 2011, its results will be announced on 5 and 6 August 2011, respectively. The final will take place in the evening of 7 August, and the final results announcement will take place on 13 August 2011.

So far, thirty-nine countries have confirmed their participation, all of them making their début. This is a remarkable edition of the Eurovision Dream Contest for being the first one; the one with most participant countries (39); the one with most languages used (18): Albanian, Armenian, English, French, Greek, Greenlandic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbocroat (Bosnian, Serbian), Slovene, Spanish, Swahili and Turkish; and the one with the least number of participant countries not singing in one of their national languges or regional languages (10): Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden.

Venue
The Geusselt Stadium was announced as the venue for the first edition of the Eurovision Dream Contest on 18th July 2011. Works inside the stadium allowed sufficient space to accomodate 16.000 spectators for the contest. Maastricht will offer that same number of beds in hotels and apartments inside the city itself and on surrounding towns.Maastricht Aachen Airport is just 12 kilometers away from the venue.

Event concept
The stadium will be split in two parts separated from each other. On one part of the stadium the stage will be installed. The part located in the back of it will function as background dressing rooms, and at the back of this part, the press centre will be instaled.

Format
Due to the number of participants, two semifinals will be hosted. The rules posted in the official website remain the same for this edition. The official participants list will be revealed on 4th July. The running order in the semifinals is already determined (as of June 29), and that of the final will be determined on 6th August.

Hosts
It was revealed on 18th June that the presenters of the contest will be Tooske Ragas and Reinout Oerlemans. (1)

Graphic Design
The design of this contest was built around the concept of introducing the contest to the public, and the motto "Live the dream, join our party". The postcards introducing each performance include: a photo of a place in Maastricht, then, photos of diverse places around the performing country (and a photo of the performing artist(s)). Afterwards, the information of the song would be revealed, with the default logo of the contest in the colours and language of the performing country in the background. The main colours used in the letterboxes and images were black, blue and red.

Participating Countries
Each day since the starting of the convocatory, the official page was revealing new participating countries; to date, 39 countries have confirmed their debuting participation.



Invited Countries (Possible Participants)
The following are participants that still can be taken for this year's contest.

Possible Future Participants
The following are countries that may take part on future editions, but that cannot take part in this edition due to rules established by the organizers of this edition.

SemiFinal 1

 * The first semifinal will take place on 29 July 2011. The results will be announced on 5 August 2011.
 * The twelve countries in this semi-final with the highest scoring points, according to a combination of televotes and jury votes from each voting country, will qualify for the final.
 * The voting countries are the same as the twenty-two participant countries in this semifinal.

SemiFinal 2

 * The first semifinal will take place on 30 July 2011. The results will be announced on 6 August 2011.
 * The twelve countries in this semi-final with the highest scoring points, according to a combination of televotes and jury votes from each voting country, will qualify for the final.
 * The voting countries are the same as the twenty-one participant countries in this semifinal, plus the host country, Netherlands.

Final

 * The final will take place on 7 August 2011. The results will be announced on 13 August 2011.
 * Only the host country, the Netherlands, is automatically qualified for the final.
 * From the two semi-finals on 29 and 30 July 2011, twenty-four countries qualified for the final. A total of twenty-five countries competed in the final.
 * The voting system used is the same as in the Eurovision Song Contest 2011, with a combination of televotes and jury votes selecting the winner. Each country will be able to vote during the voting window, opened after the conclusion of the songs for 15 minutes.