Serbian metal band LAVINA will represent the Balkan nation at the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria in May, marking a rare and exciting moment for heavy music on one of the world's biggest entertainment stages. The band won both the public vote and the jury vote at Serbia's national selection "Pesma Za Evroviziju 26," with their song "Kraj Mene" garnering a massive 29,759 public votes — more than double the tally of the runner-up, leaving no question about the mandate from Serbian music fans.
LAVINA will perform in the first semi-final on Tuesday, May 12, where they will need to finish in the top ten to advance to the grand final. The band's selection has generated significant buzz across both the Eurovision fan community and the metal world, two audiences that rarely overlap but have found common ground in celebrating LAVINA's achievement.
Metal has a complicated relationship with Eurovision. The contest has historically favored pop, dance, and schlager-influenced entries, making heavy metal acts conspicuous outliers. The genre's most famous Eurovision moment came in 2006, when Finnish monster-costumed hard rock act LORDI shocked the world by winning the contest with "Hard Rock Hallelujah," the first heavy music act to take the crown in the competition's history. Since then, metal acts have occasionally appeared at Eurovision — Italian symphonic rock act MANESKIN won in 2021 with a performance that, while not metal, carried significant rock energy — but no metal band has replicated LORDI's triumph.
LAVINA's selection represents a significant moment for the Serbian music scene, which has a robust but internationally underrecognized metal community. The band's ability to win both the public and jury votes — two constituencies that often diverge dramatically in Eurovision national selections — speaks to the quality of their songwriting and performance. Whether LAVINA can advance beyond the semi-final and make an impact on the grand final stage remains to be seen, but their presence alone ensures that heavy metal will have a voice at Eurovision 2026.