Lied van Liedjes 19

This was the nineteenth Lied van Liedjes to be held. Semi-Finals would occur on the 25th, 26th and 27th February 2002 on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Golden Duels / Second Chance night would occur on Friday, 1st March 2002 with the final happening on Saturday, 2nd March 2002.

Organization
Rome was internally chosen to host and a vote was not held. Rumours appeared that speculated Florence was originally intended to host but had to withdraw their bid late due to chaos. This would explain the week delay in the contest and the finals overlapping into March.

Adelardo Garibaldi, a very experienced director and coordinator returned as coordinator for the Italian edition. Hans Weiss remained on as Executive Producer. Annie MacLoad was originally intended to be director but couldn't attend to scheduling conflicts and had no real input on the show, thus this is the first contest without a director.

Contest
Following on from the previous edition, the 17th edition would maintain 3 semi-finals and a second chance round, renamed the Golden Duels. Five countries, the top 5 from the previous edition, would automatically qualify. This left 40 countries to be placed in pots and distributed unevenly across the 3 semi-finals. Each semi-final would have at least 13 countries, with the first semi-final given the extra due to being the first night. Six countries from each would qualify to the final. Two would enter the Golden Duels. The countries duelling would be shuffled and the winner based purely on televotes would advance. This gives 18 countries qualifying from the Semi-Finals, 3 countries qualifying from the Golden Duels, and 5 automatically qualifying countries, allowing the final to have a total of 26 participants.

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.

Other Countries

 * - the Algerian broadcaster withdrew due to conflicts with Israel. They provided no more information.
 * - the Egyptian broadcaster withdrew due to conflicts with Israel. They provided no more information.
 * - the Gibraltar broadcaster made no official statement. They did not appear on the final list of participants. It is believed they conflicted with Spain
 * - the Lebanese broadcaster made no official statement. They did not appear on the final list of participants.
 * - the Libyan broadcaster made no official statement. They did not appear on the final list of participants.
 * - the Luxembourgish broadcaster withdrew stating that the broadcaster were short on money and unable to pay the participation fee. They stated they hoped for a return in the 18th edition.
 * - the Malaysian broadcaster, who is participating in the Commonwealth spin-off tournament, appealed to the contest to allow their participation despite being in East Asia. Rumours mentioned a possible Singapore and Malaysia duo debut in the contest but they did not appear on the final list of participants.
 * - the Moroccan broadcaster made no official statement. They did not appear on the final list of participants.
 * - the Syrian broadcaster made no official statement. They did not appear on the final list of participants.
 * - the Tunisian broadcaster made no official statement. They did not appear on the final list of participants.