Croatia arrives at the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna with one of the most culturally resonant entries in recent memory. In 2026, the five-member Croatian ethno-pop collective LELEK will carry the national flag to the Wiener Stadthalle with their haunting, history-laden song "Andromeda" — a powerful meditation on feminine resilience, cultural survival, and the permanent marks etched into the skin of women who refused to disappear. From a dominant, unanimous victory at the Dora 2026 Grand Final to their place in Eurovision 2026 Semi-Final 1, this is the story of a newly formed group who transformed an ancient act of resistance into a 21st-century anthem.

The Artist: Who Are LELEK?

Few groups in recent Eurovision history have assembled with such speed, and yet feel so inevitably complete. LELEK was founded in September 2024, bringing together five Croatian vocalists whose individual backgrounds — spanning classical training, folk tradition, and contemporary pop — coalesce into something singular. The five members are Inka Večerina Perušić, Judita Štorga, Korina Olivia Rogić, Lara Brtan, and Marina Ramljak. As their official HRT performer profile makes clear, the artistic mission is unambiguous: the preservation and reinterpretation of Slavic cultural identity through contemporary music.

Their debut single, "Tanani Nani", announced their arrival with a sound that felt simultaneously ancient and modern — layered folk harmonies wrapped in clean electronic production. It established the template that LELEK would refine across each subsequent release: traditional Croatian melodic and rhythmic motifs filtered through a pop lens that never dilutes the folkloric substance. In May 2025 they released a collaborative single, "Pristajem", with established Croatian artist Matija Cvek, followed by "TANE" featuring the young artist MARIN. Each release widened the group's audience while deepening their reputation as something genuinely new in Croatian pop.

The group is shaped creatively by producer and lyricist Tomislav Roso, whose instinct for marrying lyrical depth with commercial accessibility runs through all of LELEK's work. His compositional partner is Filip Lacković, the architect of the group's melodies since their Dora 2025 entry. The creative circle expanded for the "Andromeda" project to include Zorja — a name already known to Eurovision Song Contest audiences — and Lazar Pajić, whose contributions add harmonic and emotional complexity to the final arrangement.

The group's personal chemistry is as important to their story as any biography. In a post-victory interview with HRT, they reflected on what their shared journeys have built: "It will be our third trip together and I think that really brings us closer. It is a test for many things. We are different, but there have been no conflicts. It is precisely on these trips that you see how close we are and what kind of sisterhood this is." These are not five performers thrown together by a broadcaster — they are five kindred spirits who found each other.

The Song: Decoding Andromeda

On a surface level, "Andromeda" is a majestically produced ethno-pop piece that moves between passages of hushed, hymnal restraint and swells of full-throated, five-voice unison. But beneath its musical architecture lies a layer of historical specificity so precisely sourced that the song functions as something closer to an oral testimony.

The central image of "Andromeda" is the practice of sicanje — a traditional form of tattooing carried out by Catholic women in Bosnia and parts of Croatia during periods of Ottoman rule. As the group explained in their post-Dora statement to HRT, these women tattooed their skin with Catholic symbols not as ornamentation but as a permanent, irremovable declaration of identity — marks that could not be stripped away even under the threat of forced conversion or enslavement. The symbols were each coded with precision: the cross for faith; patterns representing tradition, the circle dance (kolo), family, community, and belonging. These were not decorations — they were messages passed from one generation of women to the next, etched into the body to survive any occupation.

The song's title is deliberately cosmological. By naming itself after the Andromeda galaxy — born from the collision of wandering matter, containing hundreds of billions of stars — LELEK projects individual women's stories onto a universal, timeless scale. The mythological resonance deepens it: Andromeda, the Greek princess chained to a rock and offered as sacrifice, mirrors the fate that the historical women fought against by marking themselves as permanently, indelibly their own. As noted in the official Eurovision.com announcement, the song carries a message that is simultaneously historical and urgently contemporary: that no one should ever be made to renounce their identity.

Sonically, the arrangement builds with architectural precision. The song opens with intimate, close-harmony vocals — an almost a cappella invocation — before expanding through layered percussion, traditional melodic motifs, and a driving rhythmic pulse. The five voices are deployed as individual instruments, alternating between solo passages that highlight timbral contrast and full-voice unison climaxes. There is no English in "Andromeda", and LELEK have confirmed it will remain that way for Vienna. "We want to give everything we have and represent Croatia in the best possible light," they stated. The commitment to performing entirely in Croatian is itself a thematic extension of the song's core argument about the sacredness of identity.

The Road to Vienna: Dora 2026

Croatia's relationship with its national selection, Dora, stretches back to the country's first Eurovision participation in 1993, making it one of the longest-running national finals in Southern Europe. The contest has served as a mirror of Croatian musical ambitions across three decades — but it was Baby Lasagna's historic second place at Eurovision 2024 in Malmö, with "Rim Tim Tagi Dim", that transformed Dora from a broadcaster formality into a genuine national event. That wave of enthusiasm was fully visible in the scale and competitive depth of Dora 2026.

Twenty-four acts competed across Dora Semi-Final 1 and Semi-Final 2, with 16 songs advancing to the Grand Final on 15 February 2026. LELEK came into that final with a specific psychological advantage: they were returnees who understood the terrain. Their Dora 2025 campaign with "The Soul of My Soul" had earned them fourth place and, crucially, the procedural knowledge and mutual trust that only shared competition experience can build. "Today we are more connected, more confident, and more ready than last year, when we had known each other for just one month," they reflected ahead of the final.

The evening of 15 February belonged to LELEK in every scoring dimension. "Andromeda" was the only entry to top both the public and the professional jury — an unusual unanimity at any national final. The public awarded 96 points; the jury gave 77, for a combined total of 173 points. The second-placed act, Cold Snap with "Mucho Macho", finished on 108 points — a margin of 65 that is emphatic by any measure. Third place went to Stella Rade with "Nema Te" on 93 points. As confirmed in the official EBU announcement, the victory was both decisive and unanimous.

The national scale of interest in their win was underlined by a remarkable broadcasting footnote: HRT's Grand Final broadcast became the most-watched programme across all Croatian television channels on the evening of 15 February — a cultural moment that placed LELEK's triumph alongside the great chapters of Croatian Eurovision history. They now advance to Eurovision 2026 Semi-Final 1 on 12 May 2026 at the Wiener Stadthalle, representing Croatia at the 70th edition of the contest.

Technical Analysis: Vocal Power and Stage Potential

LELEK's primary competitive asset is one rarely available to Eurovision acts: a genuinely polyphonic five-voice ensemble trained in the harmonic vocabulary of Croatian folk music. Where most acts construct vocal harmonies as a support structure beneath a lead vocal, LELEK builds music out of harmony itself — each voice a load-bearing element in the architecture. The range deployed across "Andromeda" spans from rich, chest-resonant lower mid passages through to cleanly sustained upper registers, with the ensemble's greatest moments of impact residing in the full-voice unison climaxes. In a studio recording this is arresting; in a 20,000-seat arena it becomes something else entirely.

Staging Considerations

The group has confirmed that their Eurovision staging will incorporate costume and visual design changes tailored to the scale of the Wiener Stadthalle, while the musical arrangement and Croatian language remain untouched. Given that the song's thematic power is inseparable from its specific imagery — women's bodies as sites of cultural inscription and resistance — the visual staging carries an obligation to match the intellectual and emotional weight of the music. Expect choreography and costuming informed by the traditional Croatian and Bosnian textile and visual traditions from which sicanje originates, amplified to fill an arena stage.

In terms of running order strategy, "Andromeda" suits either an opening "scene-setter" position or the climactic final third of a semi-final. Its unhurried, atmospheric opening builds audience anticipation from a position of quiet confidence — a premium quality at a moment in the evening when televotes are crystallising. The principal technical challenge will be ensuring the arena mix preserves the subtleties of the ensemble's folk harmonics with the same clarity as the studio recording. At this level of harmonic complexity, any imprecision in the mix risks undermining the precise tuning that makes LELEK exceptional — and that tuning, grounded in years of folk tradition, is the cornerstone of Croatia's 2026 campaign.