The Sanremo Music Festival 2022 (), officially the 72nd Italian Song Festival (), was the 72nd edition of the annual Sanremo Music Festival, a television song contest held at the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, organised and broadcast by (RAI). The show was held between 1 and 5 February 2022, and was presented for the third time in a row by Amadeus, who also served as the artistic director for the competition, alongside a number of co-hosts.
The festival was won by Mahmood and Blanco with "Brividi", earning them the right to represent in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, held on home soil in Turin; Mahmood had previously won Sanremo in 2019 and had represented Italy in that year's Eurovision.
The 2022 edition of the Sanremo Music Festival took place at the Teatro Ariston in Sanremo, Liguria, organized by the Italian public broadcaster RAI. The artistic director and the presenter for the competition was Amadeus, for the third consecutive year.
The venue returned to its full capacity during the festival, after the presence of an audience was not allowed in the previous edition due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August 2021, RAI officially confirmed Amadeus as the presenter of the 72nd edition of the Sanremo Music Festival. Together with Amadeus, five co-hosts alternated during the five evenings: Ornella Muti, Lorena Cesarini, Drusilla Foer, Maria Chiara Giannetta and Sabrina Ferilli.
Besides these, Orietta Berti and Fabio Rovazzi hosted parts of the show (for sponsorship reasons) from the cruise ship Costa Toscana off the shore of Sanremo.
Voting occurred through the combination of three methods:
Their voting was articulated as follows:
Unlike previous editions, the Newcomers' section was not included in the Festival, but a similar selection was held to decree the three places reserved in the Big Artist section. The artists competing in the new format were selected through two separate contests: Standard section and .
On 20 October 2021, the RAI commission for Sanremo Music Festival 2022 announced a list of 711 acts, but only 30 artists coming from all Italian regions â excluding Basilicata and Valle d'Aosta â and from abroad were selected in the first phase.
On 22 November 2021, the RAI commission announced the eight finalists.
After the auditions, a RAI commission â composed by Amadeus, Gianmarco Mazzi, Claudio Fasulo, Massimo Martelli and Leonardo de Amicis â identified 4 finalists for the competition among the 330 acts:
On 15 December 2021, the twelve finalists performed their songs at Sanremo Casino in Sanremo, with the show 2021 broadcast on Rai 1 and presented by Amadeus. The three winners of the night, i.e. Yuman, Tananai and Matteo Romano, participated in Sanremo 2022 with a new entry.
The traditional Big Artists section of the contest was merged with the Newcomers' section, and saw the participation of 25 artists, 22 being selected among established artists as before and 3 qualifying from . The former 22, selected from 343 submissions received, were revealed on 4 December 2021, and also attended the night of on 15 December, where their competing songs' titles were also made known.
The first twelve artists each performed their song.
The remaining thirteen artists each performed their song.
All of the twenty-five artists performed their songs once again.
The artists each performed a cover of a song from the '60s, '70s, '80s, or '90s. They could either perform alone or duet with a guest performer.
All of the artists performed their songs one last time, with the top three moving on to the final round of voting.
On 31 January 2022, director of Rai 1 publicly announced through a press conference that there would be no vaccine mandate for the Sanremo Music Festival 2022 singers as it would have breached the singers' right to privacy on their health status. This was highly criticized by the Italian public, resulting into a second declaration by Coletta, claiming that there was a "misunderstanding" and that the singers would also be required to show their proof of vaccination upon entrance at the festival.
The special guests of Sanremo Music Festival 2022 included:
Rai 1 and Rai Radio 2 brought the official broadcasts of the festival in Italy. The five evenings were also streamed online via the broadcaster's official website RaiPlay, which made it available in all member countries of the European Broadcasting Union, since the festival is broadcast on the Eurovision network.