Cambodia is next up after South Korea, and its selection has a quirk nobody has written about: it is the only national final in the contest where a record label can submit an entry, not just an individual artist.
That single rule change produces a different kind of competition, and it is worth understanding before the show airs.
What’s confirmed
Show: Cambodia’s Finest Voice Broadcaster: TV5 Cambodia Date: early September 2026 — no exact date confirmed Production: Phoenix Communications, with the project led by Gigil Phnom Penh
Eurovoix confirmed the selection format in June.
The date is the frustrating part. Every other September selection has a fixed slot. Cambodia has a window, and with the month starting next week, that window is closing fast.
The record label rule
Applications opened to both individuals and record labels. Every other broadcaster in the contest has run either an open call for artists or an internal selection.
Why it matters:
It favours finished product. A label submitting an entry brings a produced track, a marketing plan and an artist already under contract. An individual singer entering an open call typically does not.
It changes who competes. Cambodia’s music industry is label-driven in a way that makes this practical rather than exclusionary — it is arguably the format best matched to how the local scene actually works.
It compresses the timeline. Labels can turn around a competition-ready entry faster than a talent-search format can develop one. That may be exactly why Cambodia can still run a September final without having announced a date.
The Phoenix Communications footnote
The production company behind this selection has an unexpected place in Eurovision Asia’s history.
In June, a claim circulated that the Eurovision Asia winner would compete at Eurovision 2027 rather than simply perform there. That claim was reportedly traced back to Phoenix Communications, spread widely, was retracted within days, and was ultimately corrected by Voxovation.
It appears to have been a miscommunication rather than anything deliberate — but it is a reminder that in a first-edition contest, information travels through production companies as well as broadcasters. We traced the full sequence in our 2027 rumour explainer.
Cambodia’s forgotten Eurovision history
Here is something almost nobody knows: this is not Cambodia’s first attempt at a Eurovision-format contest.
In December 2009, Cambodia launched a national selection show for Our Sound — The Asia Pacific Song Contest, the earlier Asian Eurovision project. That contest collapsed in 2011 after repeated delays, and Cambodia’s selection came to nothing.
Cambodia was also on the original sixteen-country lineup for that contest. Seventeen years later it is finally getting a real shot. The full story is in our Eurovision Asia prehistory.
What to watch for
- A date announcement, which should land within days
- Whether the winner is a label act or an independent — a genuine test of how the submission model plays out
- The voting split, unpublished at the time of writing
The show will stream on the official Eurovision YouTube channel with a Rest of the World vote, like every other selection. See our voting guide for how to take part, and the national selection calendar for everything else still to come.
Last updated 25 August 2026. No exact date had been confirmed at the time of writing.