When Vanilla Ninja — Lenna Kuurmaa, Piret Järvis-Milder, and Kerli Kivilaan — stepped onto the Eesti Laul 2026 stage on the night of 14 February, they did not arrive as underdogs. They arrived as an institution reclaiming its territory. By the end of the evening, Estonia's journey to the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna had been decided with uncommon clarity: "Too Epic to Be True" swept both rounds of public voting, capturing 35% of the Superfinal vote and booking a place at the contest that Vanilla Ninja know intimately — and have not visited, as Estonian representatives, ever before. The title alone announces the terms: this is not a tentative entry. This is a declaration.

The Artist: Estonia's Most Travelled Band

Vanilla Ninja were founded in Tallinn in 2002, and their early trajectory was unlike almost any Estonian act before or since. Within two years of forming, they had broken through not just domestically but in the competitive German-speaking European market — precisely the most demanding proving ground for a pop act from a small Baltic nation. Their debut international album, Traces of Sadness, charted at number three in Germany and number four in Austria, according to the official Eurovision.com profile. The hits followed in rapid succession: "Tough Enough", "When the Indians Cry", "Blue Tattoo", "I Know", and "Dangerzone" — a catalogue that rewrote what international ambition could look like for an Estonian band.

The trio's current lineup consists of Lenna Kuurmaa on lead vocals, Piret Järvis-Milder on vocals and guitar, and Kerli Kivilaan on vocals, guitar, and bass. Their identity is emphatically that of a band rather than a fronted solo act with backing performers: two of the three members are multi-instrumentalists, and the three-part vocal blend that distinguishes their sound is as central to their artistic proposition as any individual performance. As Estonian World noted in their post-win profile, Vanilla Ninja's victory brought "familiarity, scale and unapologetic spectacle" to the Estonian national selection — choices that signal confidence rather than caution.

The Swiss Chapter and the Eurovision Legacy

Their relationship with Eurovision predates Vienna by two decades. In 2005, their success in German-speaking Europe made Vanilla Ninja the natural choice for Switzerland, who selected them to represent the country at the Eurovision Song Contest in Kiev. Their entry, "Cool Vibes", finished eighth in the Grand Final — a result that demonstrated they could perform at the highest level of the contest under pressure. The detail that matters in 2026 is that they led during part of the voting before settling into eighth: they know how it feels when the scoreboard moves in your direction, and they know how to read an arena crowd of those dimensions.

Two decades is a long time in pop music. But, as Estonian World observed, Vanilla Ninja's return to the contest is "not simply a legacy name at home." They have remained active and visible in the Estonian cultural landscape throughout, sustaining a fanbase that proved decisively responsive when the public was given the vote at Eesti Laul. The context matters too: Estonia ran back-to-back strong Eurovision campaigns in 2024 and 2025, with Tommy Cash's "Espresso Macchiato" securing a remarkable third-place finish in Vienna 2025 and resetting what Estonians believe is achievable at the contest. Choosing Vanilla Ninja — a band with proven international recognition and a songwriter with deep pop credentials — suggests ERR's ambition is not merely to participate.

The Song: Too Epic to Be True

"Too Epic to Be True" was written by Sven Lõhmus, one of Estonia's most influential pop songwriters and producers, whose catalogue has shaped much of the country's modern Eurovision-era sound. The title functions as both description and provocation: it acknowledges the scale of the moment — a returning band, a storied contest, a Vienna stage — and simultaneously dares the listener to dismiss it, confident that the music will answer the challenge. The result, as Estonian World described it, is "full-throttle theatrical pop" built for exactly the format it enters: high drama, sharp hooks, and unapologetic spectacle.

Musical Construction and Thematic Identity

The song operates in the arena pop tradition — the kind of track designed to feel enormous in a large venue, where the gap between a verse and a chorus is measured not in bars but in emotional altitude. Its English-language lyric is universal in register: the themes of scale, stakes, and self-belief that run through it translate directly across linguistic borders without requiring translation or cultural context. That directness is deliberate. Lõhmus has written for the Eurovision stage with intention: the hook is built to survive the first listen and reward the third, which is the essential test of a competitive contest entry. Theatrically, the song's orchestration builds with the kind of cumulative pressure that gives a performer something to work against — the arrangement rises to meet the moment rather than simply marking time.

The Lõhmus Factor

Songwriter Sven Lõhmus's fingerprint on Estonian pop is deep enough that his involvement alone signals professional intent. His output has consistently navigated the intersection of domestic Estonian pop sensibility and internationally legible pop architecture — the same skill set required to write a Eurovision entry that functions both as a national statement and as a competitor in a 37-country arena. For Vanilla Ninja, the combination of their own extensive experience performing large-scale material live and Lõhmus's craft as a constructor of hooky, audience-ready pop produced a song that, according to the official Eurovision.com announcement, is sending Estonia to Vienna with clear ambitions.

The Road to Vienna: A Sweep at Eesti Laul

Eesti Laul — Estonia's annual national selection for Eurovision — is one of the Baltic region's most respected national finals, notable for combining a rigorous international jury with a genuine public vote in a format that tests both song and performer under competitive pressure. As Estonian World observed, the structure is designed with a clear internal logic: "juries shape the shortlist; the public writes the ending." In 2026, the public wrote their ending with unusual decisiveness. Estonia's only Eurovision victory to date — Tanel Padar, Dave Benton and 2XL's landmark win with "Everybody" in 2001 — was itself launched via a national public mandate; the same instinct was evident on 14 February.

The Eesti Laul 2026 Grand Final was held on 14 February 2026, with twelve acts competing across two voting rounds broadcast on ERR. In the first round, jury points (from an eight-member international panel that included Paul Jordan, Eurovision expert; Rosa Linn, Armenian Eurovision alumna; Linnea Deb, award-winning Swedish songwriter; and Renato Milone, Italian producer) were combined 50/50 with public phone and online votes to determine the Superfinal top three. Vanilla Ninja qualified alongside NOËP ("Days Like This") and Ollie ("Slave"). Notably, the jury's favourite in Round 1 was Ollie, who received 65 of a possible points; Stockholm Cowboys placed second with 63. Vanilla Ninja's route to the Superfinal was driven, from the beginning, by the public.

In the Superfinal, the jury was stood down entirely and the public decided alone. The result confirmed by ERR was emphatic: Vanilla Ninja received 16,584 votes — approximately 35% of the total — against 15,161 for NOËP and a barely-separated 15,148 for Ollie. As the detailed ERR voting breakdown confirmed, the band had also led Round 1, becoming the only act to exceed 10,000 public votes (10,070) — a double sweep of both public voting rounds that left no ambiguity about the audience's preference. A new feature in 2026 — online web voting, introduced alongside the traditional phone vote — contributed to the total, potentially broadening the electorate beyond the existing televote base.

It is, in the terms of Eesti Laul history, a commanding mandate. Vanilla Ninja will carry that mandate to the First Semi-Final on 12 May 2026 at the Wiener Stadthalle, performing in the second half of the running order — a favourable position for viewer recall when televoting opens. Their target is the Grand Final on 16 May.

Technical Analysis: Voice, Stage, and Sound

Vocal Profile

Vanilla Ninja's central vocal asset is their three-voice ensemble. Lenna Kuurmaa's lead voice — the primary instrument through the contest entry's verses and chorus — carries the kind of focused, direct delivery that reads clearly in large acoustic spaces without sacrificing emotional nuance. Piret Järvis-Milder and Kerli Kivilaan provide harmonic depth that moves the sound beyond the profile of a solo pop act toward something with more textural authority. The blend is not a decorative feature; it is structurally load-bearing. In the context of "Too Epic to Be True" — an arena pop entry built on cumulative emotional pressure — that three-part vocal architecture gives the production layers that most single-artist entries cannot replicate. Years of touring and live performance across European arenas have calibrated the trio's ability to project in precisely the kind of environment the Wiener Stadthalle demands.

Staging Potential

The staging logic for "Too Epic to Be True" is already suggested by its title: if the song declares its own scale, the staging must meet that claim without becoming self-parody. Vanilla Ninja's historical approach — high-energy performance, live instrumentation, physical presence — translates well to the Eurovision production design language. Two genuine instrumentalists on stage creates narrative authenticity that purely choreography-driven staging typically cannot match; it also opens spatial design options (platforms, mid-stage risers, central performance focus with flanking instrumentation) that give the staging director significant creative leverage. The song's arena pop architecture — with its building dynamic and hook-centred climax — maps naturally onto the kind of performance arc that Eurovision's lighting and pyrotechnic designers are most practised at underlining. The result should be a performance that feels substantial even on first viewing and that holds up to the scrutiny of a rehearsal-period press watching three or four times in close succession.

Competitive Outlook

Estonia's placement in the second half of Semi-Final 1 is strategically sound: second-half acts consistently benefit from stronger televote recall when voting windows open. The specific competition within Semi-Final 1 has not yet been fully defined by relative rankings, but Vanilla Ninja's combination of name recognition — particularly meaningful among voters in German-speaking Europe and across the Baltic region — a commercially crafted songwriter at the helm, and an arena-proven live act is a portfolio that competes in any field. Estonia's recent record is its best supporting evidence: the country has demonstrated in back-to-back years (2024: qualifiers; 2025: third place) that it can deliver in Vienna, not merely attend. Vanilla Ninja arrive as the logical inheritors of that momentum — with the additional context of a 20-year European career and a contest pedigree that most of their Semi-Final 1 rivals cannot match. "Too Epic to Be True" is, on the evidence before Vienna, an accurate self-assessment.