Alfie Arcuri to represent Australia at New Wave 2021

Australia Decides star Alfie Arcuri is set to represent Australia at the international music contest 'New Wave' which takes place in Sochi, Russia from 19-25 August.

New Wave is a six day music festival and competition set up in 2002 by Russian composer Igor Krutoy, Latvian pianist and composer Raimonds Pauls and later enhanced by the Russian superstar Alla Pugacheva.

Although performers from all over the world compete, it does tend to skew to more Eastern European and ex-Soviet states.

Former winners have included Eurovision champion Jamala for Ukraine and other Eurovision contestants such as DoReDos and Natalia Gordienko for Moldova and Demy for Greece. Inis Nestiri won the previous New Wave contest for Albania and has competed at Festivali i Kenges (Albania's national final for Eurovision) twice.

Although many nations from the Asia Pacific have competed (China, Indonesia and Vietnam) this will be the first time an artist from Australia has competed.

Alfie Arcuri competed in the first edition of Eurovision - Australia Decides in 2019 finishing 5th with his song 'To Myself'.

He then went on to compete at another major European song festival 'The Golden Stag' in Romania where he performed that song and a local song 'Acasă' where he won best interpretation of a Romanian song.

In 2020 his song 'Running' was selected to be the Cypriot entry at Eurovision performed by Sandro Nicolas. Unfortunately due to the cancellation of Eurovision he was unable to see it come to life on stage in Rotterdam.

Earlier this year he released the song 'Handsome Man’ with Cam Nacson.

The full list of artists competing in New Wave are:

• Saro Gevorgyan (Armenia)

• Alfie Arcuri (Australia)

• Samra Rəhimli (Azerbaijan)

• CHEICHAI Group (Belarus)

• Denitsa Karaslavova (Bulgaria)

• Natia Rigvava (Georgia)

• Jorge Gonzalez (Spain)

• Fabio Curto (Italy)

• Mezzo Group (Kazakhstan)

• Laura & Mark (Netherlands)

• Edita Links (Serbia)

• Sevil (Russia)

• GRINKEVICH Group (Russia)

• Maxim Subachev (Russia)