Bulgarian National Television (BNT) will launch the new season of the Bulgarian version of the Eurovision song contest on October 7 2007.

A total of 72 songs would take part in the contest, avtora.com said. BNT would air the contest on three consecutive Sundays.

At the end of October, audience vote will select nine of the songs to continue in the Bulgarian semi-finals of the contest in January 2008. Another nine songs, selected by the jury, will enter directly in the semi-final.

The winner will enter directly in the Eurovision finals, a privilege, won with the fifth place in the finals of Bulgaria’s last participants in Eurovision, Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankuov.

According to the rules, the songs can be by foreign authors, but at least one of the authors should be a Bulgarian citizen.

Dragomir Draganov, host of the preliminary stage of the contest said that “everyone can sing somewhere in Europe, in clubs in front of 150 people, most of which Bulgarian, but Eurovision is a real gate to the European music stage.”