Lied van Liedjes 24

It was the 24th edition of Lied van Liedjes. The Semi orders were announced on the 21st June 2002, with the semis being held between 23rd-26th July, the second chance duels on the 27th, and the final on the 28th.

Organization
It was the first time that a host country won the edition, so the directors tried to do their best to solve this interesting question, they decided that would host again, on the city of Oulu, without public vote for cities. The internal pick was between Oulu, Turku or Porvoo in Finland, or Tartu in.

Annie McLoad continued with the place of Director, Hans Weiss continued as Executive Producer and Eila Kekkonen was the coordinator again.

Contest
Two nations debuted, the small country of managed to pay the participation fee, unlike other small nations that tried to return this edit:  and. The other nation that debuted was, this was surpring to everyone because they were expecting zero asian nations to participate with the big silence of the delegations of and.

Returning to the contest, and with help of Greece and Bulgaria, paid the participation fee and submited an entry. was the second confirmed return after being able to pay the fee. The third return and last, was the delegation of, that later justified their ausence on the contest due to lack of interest of their citizens, which ended up not to be true.

Excluding and, 5 other nations tried to return or debut, but failed due to some problems:  was supposed to return this edition, but they didn't managed to pay the fee,  wanted to participate but they later said no because of the existence of Azerbaijan and Turkey, the Executive Producer said that there would be one day where Israel and the arab countries could participate in peace together. and tried to return but they decided to no doing at last minute due to the crescent "Arabphobia" because of the terroism news. And finally, they wanted to debut at the same time as Japan, but some problems of schdule made the Malaysian delegation not to submit their artist in time.

Withdrawing from the contest, the first announcement was stating their last bad result. and followed up, stating that the paying the travel cost with the participation fee would be impossible with the budget the government gave them. And the last one was, saying they went broke.

With 46 nations participating, a fourth semi final would be added to the counts, making this a 4 semi finals edition with a second chance round:
 * Semi 1 - North Europe + North America
 * Semi 2 - Central Europe
 * Semi 3 - South/Southeast Europe +North Africa
 * Semi 4 - East Europe + Asia/Oceania

The Automatic Qualifiers would be the host and the rest of the top 5:, , ,.