Lied van Liedjes 31

This was the thirtieth-first Lied van Liedjes to be held. Semi-Finals would occur between 18 and 21 March 2003. The grand final happening on 23 March 2003.

Organization
Palermo was the host city picked between a heated voting between Palermo, Torino and Venice. Lucia Danielsen returned as executive producer, alongside the previous director Eila Kekkonen. Adelardo Garibaldi, a veteran in LVL, was appointed as a coordinator of the project.

Contest
The contest would reform again into a 3 semi-finals contest where the nations would be divided between geographical regions The fee suffered a slight increase, which contributed to the withdrawal of several countries:, , , and. Other countries that withdrew included: and  justified their withdrawls because of the lack of support from their citizens,  and  justified that wanted to take a gap edition for the broadcasters to breath a bit since they were busy with a lot of other projects. and withdrew because of their results. withdrew because the budget was all expent on their entry in edition 30. No country debuted, many were rooting for another authonomous region to debut, but no announcements were made. Returning were two nations: managed with Italy help to pay the fee and participate close to home. While returned finally to make pair with Tunisia on this edit. Countries that tried to return but failed: The automatic qualifiers remained as the top 5 from the previous edition:, , , and.
 * Semi 1 - North Europe + North America + Israel
 * Semi 2 - South Europe + Southeast Europe + Africa
 * Semi 3 - East Europe + Asia
 * - Algeria wanted to participate again, but due to the participation fee at the moment they couldn't pay it
 * - The Danish broadcaster forbid Faroese broadcaster to participate on this edition, LVL might intervene if the danish keep stop any progress.

Semi-Final 1
and voted on this semi

Semi-Final 2
and voted on this semi

Semi-Final 3
voted on this semi

Non-participation due to financial problems

 * - probably also due to the danish prohibition
 * - probably also due to the danish prohibition
 * - probably also due to the danish prohibition
 * - probably also due to the danish prohibition
 * - probably also due to the danish prohibition
 * - probably also due to the danish prohibition

Non-participation due to unknown/other reasons

 * - Danish broadcaster forbid Faroese broadcaster to participate on this edition.
 * - Gibraltar mentioned a possible return, but they don't give any reasoning about why they don't participate
 * - broadcaster decided to take a gap edition
 * - broadcaster decided to take a gap edition
 * - Northern Ireland made a pact with the Irish broadcaster to send a join entry for this edition.