Lied van Liedjes 11

This was the eleventh Lied van Liedjes to be held. It was held on the 19th, 21st and 23rd of June 2001.

Organization
Morocco winning the previous edition meant a couple of issues for the company. Morocco didn't have the necessary infrastructure ready to be used in time, and was far away from many countries in Europe. It had some travel restrictions and mostly spoke Arabic, not English or French. A compromise was held where the contest would be hosted in neighbouring nation, and third place Spain, in Malaga, a close city to Morocco. The coordinator role would be filled by a Spanish and Moroccan person working together.

Morocco winning also led to the resignation of Maurits Baalbergen, the executive producer. He had been the executive producer since the very first edition so the replacement was hard. One of his former colleagues who worked on the very first edition of the show, Eliza Boterman, stepped up and filled the executive producer role. She appointed old friend Hubert Fijneman and coordinator of the fourth edition Hans Weiss to be joint directors.

Contest
Hubert Fijneman was unhappy with many non-European nations to participate. Morocco was invited back on principle of winning the contest. Armenia was let back in due to ties with the European council and Cyprus was let back in due to Greece's threatening to withdraw. Australia, France, Italy and Latvia returned. For new debuts, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Czechia and Estonia all joined the contest.

Due to the high amount of participants, this is the first edition with two semi finals instead of one pre-qualification round. The winner from edition 10, Morocco; the second place from edition 10, Sweden; and third place from edition 10, Spain would automatically qualify to the final on Saturday.

Pots for Semi Finals
To avoid too many similar countries in the same semi final, each country would be placed in a geographical or cultural group and then drawn to be in the semi final from there.

Semi Final One
The first Semi Final was held on Tuesday June 19th. Out of the 15 countries participating, 9 would go to the final.

Semi Final Two
The second Semi Final was held on Thursday June 21st. Out of the 15 countries participating, 9 would go to the final.

Grand Final
Sweden, Spain and Morocco would be placed automatically in the final. 9 from each semi-final would join them for a total of 21 countries