Prior to the 2020 Contest, Moldova had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest fifteen times since its first entry in 2005. The nation's best placing in the contest was third, which it achieved in 2017 with the song "Hey Mamma!" performed by SunStroke Project. To this point, Moldova have achieved another three top-ten placings at the contest, with Zdob și Zdub placing sixth with "Bunica bate toba" in 2005, Natalia Barbu placing tenth in 2007 with "Fight" and DoReDoS in 2018 performing "My Lucky Day", also placing tenth. In 2019, Moldova was represented by Anna Odobescu with the song "Stay". The country failed to qualify placed 12th in semi-final. For the 2020 Contest, the Moldovan national broadcaster, TeleRadio-Moldova, broadcast the event within Moldova and organise the selection process for the nation's entry.
Before Eurovision
''Finala națională 2020''
Finala națională was be the national final format developed by TRM in order to select Moldova's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2020.
Format
The selection of the competing entries for the national final and ultimately the Moldovan Eurovision entry takes place over two rounds. On 1 February 2020, all artists who submitted a song to the broadcaster were invited to take part in a live audition, where the twenty qualifiers were decided. The winner will be decided by voting from the Moldovan public and a jury of music professionals during the final on 29 February 2020.
Competing entries
Interested artists and composers had until 17 January 2020 to submit their entries to the Moldovan broadcaster. On 21 January 2020, it was announced that 36 entries were submitted. On 24 January 2020, it was announced that CHE-MD's entry "Adio" had been disqualified as it had been published and performed publicly prior to 1 September 2019, which is a violation of contest rules. At the same time, it was announced that the organisers had also included Pelageya Stefoglo with the song "Empathy" into the list of competing entries. On 1 February 2020, all of the submitted entries were performed live in front of a jury, which consisted of Anatol Chiriac, Gabriela Tocari, Andriano Marian, Paul Gămurari and Mihai Agafiță. This was broadcast live on Moldova 2, as well as online via Teleradio-Moldova's Facebook and YouTube pages. Due to the quality of the acts presented at the live audition round, the jury recommended to the broadcaster to organise a national selection, consisting of 20 acts. Among the finalists, Natalia Gordienko represented Moldova at Eurovision in 2006, Geta Burlacu represented Moldova in 2008, Pasha Parfeny represented Moldova in 2012, and Denis Midone represented Moldova at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2012. On 29 February 2020, Geta Burlacu announced her withdrawal from the national final due to personal reasons.
Final
The final will took place on 29 February 2020. Nineteen songs competed and the winner was selected based on the combination of a public televote and the votes of an expert jury.
At Eurovision
According to Eurovision rules, all nations with the exceptions of the host country and the "Big 5" are required to qualify from one of two semi-finals in order to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progress to the final. The European Broadcasting Union split up the competing countries into six different pots based on voting patterns from previous contests, with countries with favourable voting histories put into the same pot. On 28 January 2020, a special allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in. Moldova was placed into the second semi-final, to be held on 14 May 2020, and was scheduled to perform in the first half of the show. However, due to 2019-20 pandemic of Coronavirus, the contest was cancelled. In the Eurovision Song Celebration youtube broadcast in place of the heats, it was revealed that the song would have performed 4th in Semi Final 2, having been preceded by Austria and preceding San Marino.
