Thinla Will Sing "Bae" for Laos — Sieng Lao: The One Result

“Bae” won Sieng Lao: The One, and Thinla will perform it for Laos at Eurovision Asia 2026. The result was announced on Thursday 24 September 2026, a day after she sang all three candidate songs on VTE9.

The point most people miss about this show still applies: Laos was never picking a singer. Thinla had been selected internally and announced on 13 September. Sieng Lao: The One existed only to decide which of three songs she takes to Bangkok — “Star,” “Bae” or “Water.”

The result

“Bae” was announced as the winner. That is all VTE9 published: no points, and no second and third place between “Star” and “Water.”

So we know what won, but not by how much, and not whether the jury, the Lao public and the international vote agreed with each other.

The song

“Bae” is sung in English and Lao. Thinla co-wrote it — under her full name, Thinlamphone Mahavong — with DonutDropIt, Johan Gustafsson, Rebbi James and Sam Intharaphithak.

It performed second of the three on night one, between “Star” and “Water.” All three candidates were written by teams of five or six, and the full versions had been available since 17 September, a week before the result.

How the vote worked

The show ran over two nights, both at 20:30 ICT (15:30 CEST) on VTE9 and the official Eurovision YouTube channel:

• Wednesday 23 September — Thinla performed all three songs, and voting opened.
• Thursday 24 September — the result.

Voting stayed open for a full 24 hours between the two broadcasts. That was unusually long; most Eurovision Asia selections close their vote during the show itself.

The split was the standard one:

• 40% professional jury
• 40% Lao public
• 20% Rest of the World

The jury was Ola Blackeyes, Sack Cells and Baby Max. Tot Lina hosted in English and Lanny in Lao, from Vientiane.

The quirk in a three-song vote

International viewers got up to eight free votes on the official Eurovision Asia website, and the rules require those votes to be spread across at least three songs.

With only three songs in the running, that meant every voter had to back all three. Nobody could put everything behind a favourite and ignore the rest; the only decision was how to weight eight votes across a field you were obliged to support in full.

The effect is to compress margins. A song couldn’t be shut out by voters refusing to pick it — only out-weighted. We explain the mechanics in our Rest of the World voting explainer.

Who is Thinla?

Thinla — formerly performing as Thinlamphone — blends traditional Morlum with pop, R&B and dance. The contest’s biography dates her releases from 2021, with more than twenty since; other biographies trace her recording career back to 2015.

She isn’t an unknown at home or in the region. She has performed at the 44th and 45th ASEAN Summits, toured the United States, and represented Laos at the Round Festival in Busan.

That matters for a country whose selection has had almost no English-language coverage all season. Laos arrives in Bangkok with an artist who has already worked international stages, not a talent-show discovery.

What it means

Laos became the fourth country with a complete entry, after Bhutan, the Philippines and South Korea — and the first to finish a selection built on the “internal artist, public song vote” model that Vietnam has since used and Mongolia has now adopted. We compare the three approaches in Three ways to pick a Eurovision Asia entry.

We rate Laos at 5.5% in our odds. The song being settled was already expected when we last revised, so the number has barely moved.

Laos’s full profile, including broadcaster VTE9, is on the Laos country page.

Last updated 7 October 2026. This page was a voting guide before the show and now carries the result.