Lied van Liedjes 27

This was the twenty-fifth Lied van Liedjes to be held. Semi-Finals would occur on the Monday 19th, Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st August 2002. Golden Duels / Second Chance night would occur on Friday 23rd August 2002 with the final happening on Saturday 24th August 2002.

=Organization= Hans Weiss personally chose Lisbon to host the contest given it's large city status. Hans Weiss would continue as executive producer, while Annie McLoad wouldn't return as director due to a clash in interests between Weiss and McLoad. Eila Kekkonen was chosen to replace Annie McLoad for the current edition given her experience in the two previous editions of the contest. The coordinator was chosen to be Portugese television mastermind, Marissa Henriques.

=Contest= Hans Weiss took charge of this contest very literally and he was the final say on whether countries could debut, return or take part. He immediately denied any nation to debut due to the high amount of nations wanting to participate. He's first choice to slim down the countries taking part was by relegating all non-European nations from taking part, even ones with territory in Europe. This meant the withdrawal of, and. was originally supposed to withdraw, but an outcry of nations convinced Hans Weiss to let them stay due to being within the auto-qualifiers.

Hans Weiss also wanted to relegate nations who couldn't pay the fee, or were 'too small' in his eyes to participate or do well. This meant that, , , , and. The forced-withdrawal of Cyprus also made withdraw out of protest. also withdrew due to the relegation of both the Aland and Faroe Islands. threatened to withdraw, but ultimately stayed.

The withdrawals allowed previously withdrawn nations to return. announced their return to the contest alongside. Hans Weiss didn't want to include Israel originally due to it being in the middle east, but contractual agreements that ensured Israel's return if all other Arabic nations withdrew (the last one being Turkey), made it possible.

This edition would see the return of the pots-based semi finals. With 38 participating nations, with 5 automatic qualifiers, that left 33 nations to be spread across 3 semi-finals. Each semi-final would have 11 countries. 6 would qualify from each semi-final, with 2 going to second chance from each. Golden Duels would produce an extra 3 qualifiers for a total of 26 finalists.

The automatic qualifiers were:

=Other Countries=

Northern Europe

 * - no official statement made.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.
 * - withdrew out of protest of the new relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss, that would prohibit the from participating.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.

Western Europe

 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.
 * - announced they would not take part in the edition due to financial reasons.
 * - no official statement made.

Eastern Europe

 * - no official statement made. they last took part in
 * - no official statement made. they last took part in

Southern Europe

 * - announced they would not take part in the edition due to financial reasons.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - withdrew out of protest of the new relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss, that would prohibit from participating.
 * - announced they would not take part in the edition due to financial reasons.
 * - announced they would not take part in the edition due to financial reasons.

Americas

 * - no official statement made.

Asia

 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made. they have yet to debut.
 * - no official statement made. they have yet to debut.
 * - no official statement made. they have yet to debut.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss. Due to the returning nation of Israel, they were unlikely to take part nonetheless.

Africa

 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made.
 * - no official statement made. they have yet to debut.

Oceania

 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.
 * - unable to re-join the contest due to relegation rule introduced by Hans Weiss.