In 2026, Montenegro steps onto the Eurovision Song Contest stage in Vienna with something that feels less like a competition entry and more like a declaration. Tamara Živković — classically trained vocalist, competition veteran, and rising light of the Balkans — carries her country's flag with "Nova zora" (English: New Dawn), a soaring Balkan pop anthem that fuses contemporary production with deep emotional authenticity. Composed by Boris Subotić and Marko Drežnjak and selected through the national competition Montesong 2025, this is a song built with intention and delivered with conviction — and Vienna is exactly the stage it was made for.

Table of Contents

Montenegro's Road to Vienna 2026
Who Is Tamara Živković?
"Nova zora" — Music, Meaning, and Metaphor
Montesong 2025: The National Selection
Technical Analysis: Voice, Staging, and Competitive Potential

Montenegro's Road to Vienna 2026

For a small Adriatic nation of fewer than 700,000 people, Montenegro's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest has always carried an outsized national significance. Since debuting as an independent country at Eurovision 2007 in Helsinki, Montenegro has consistently offered the competition some of its most distinctive voices — at turns avant-garde, theatrical, and deeply traditional. Now, as Vienna 2026 approaches, broadcaster RTCG (Radio-televizija Crne Gore) has made a conscious and carefully considered decision: to send an artist who combines pop accessibility with genuine vocal artistry. That artist is Tamara Živković, and her song is "Nova zora."

Official coverage from RTCG's Eurosong news hub confirms that the 2026 campaign has been one of the broadcaster's most focused and ambitious in recent memory — a deliberate shift toward sending a competitive, emotionally resonant entry to Vienna. With Tamara Živković at its centre, that ambition has a face, a voice, and a song equal to the moment.

There is also a quiet historical symmetry at play. Montenegro's best-ever Eurovision result — Knez's ballad "Adio" finishing 13th in the Grand Final in 2015 — was achieved at a contest also held in Vienna. Eleven years later, the same city gives Tamara Živković the chance to write an even more significant chapter in her country's story.

Who Is Tamara Živković?

Tamara Živković is one of those rare artists whose biography reads as deliberate preparation for a moment exactly like this one. Born in Kotor — a city so architecturally and historically extraordinary that it carries UNESCO World Heritage status for its Venetian old town and medieval walls — she grew up surrounded by centuries of culture and artistic tradition. That heritage is audible in her music: a seriousness of purpose that coexists effortlessly with pop instinct and commercial appeal.

From Kotor to Belgrade: Classical Roots and Academic Discipline

From an early age, Tamara's musical education took a deliberately classical path. She dedicated herself to the flute — not as a casual pursuit but as a serious discipline, entering national and international competitions where she accumulated significant awards. The technical rigour of classical study — breath control, phrasing precision, dynamic range management — would prove to be an irreplaceable foundation for everything that followed in her vocal career.

Television came calling in 2016, when a fifteen-year-old Tamara competed on Pinkove Zvezdice, the popular children's singing show that has shaped many a Balkan career. It was an early taste of high-pressure public performance, and she navigated it with a composure that belied her age. Years later, she carried those lessons into the demanding arena of Zvezde Granda — one of Southeast Europe's most widely watched singing competitions — where she reached the grand finals, placing 14th out of 16 finalists in a field of formidable, established vocal talent.

Parallel to her competition years, Tamara has maintained a commitment to formal musical education. At the time of her Montesong 2025 selection, she was deep into her third year as an undergraduate at the prestigious University of Arts in Belgrade — a conservatory environment demanding serious academic engagement alongside professional performance. The discipline required to sustain both tracks simultaneously speaks to a core determination that defines her approach to everything she does.

Her artistic influences are equally revealing. She has cited Charli XCX, Rosalía, and Lady Gaga as formative inspirations — a trio whose common thread is the refusal to be contained by genre convention. As confirmed in her official profile on Eurovision.com, this blend of classical foundation and forward-looking contemporary aesthetic is precisely what makes her approach to "Nova zora" so distinctive and so competitive.

Competition Persistence: The Montesong 2024 Chapter

The story of Tamara Živković's arrival at Eurovision 2026 is not simply a story of talent — it is a story of persistence. Before her triumph at Montesong 2025, she had already competed in the inaugural Montesong 2024 edition, performing the track "Poguban let" (Doomed Flight) and finishing 9th. For a less determined artist, that result might have been an ending. For Tamara, it was information. She spent the following year refining her approach, returned in 2025 with a sharper song and a more focused performance, and this time she won decisively. The contrast between the two Montesong campaigns is, in retrospect, the compressed biography of an artist who understands precisely what it takes to claim a seat on Europe's biggest stage.

"Nova zora" — Music, Meaning, and Metaphor

The title "Nova zora" — Montenegrin for New Dawn — is not merely poetic decoration. It is a thematic manifesto. The song speaks to resilience and renewal: the quiet, luminous courage required to begin again after darkness. In the context of Montenegro's Eurovision journey — a history marked by artistic highs, financial withdrawals, and persistent returns — the metaphor carries layers of meaning that any attentive viewer will sense running beneath the melody.

Thematic Analysis

Lyrically, "Nova zora" operates on a deliberately universal frequency. The imagery of dawn — gathering light, transforming sky, darkness giving way — functions simultaneously as personal confession and collective anthem. The song does not anchor itself in a specific narrative or dated cultural reference; instead, it inhabits an emotional state: the feeling of standing at the threshold of something new and finding within yourself the courage to step forward.

That emotional spaciousness is precisely what allows audiences across Europe's competing nations to locate themselves within the song's three minutes — regardless of language, regardless of background. The choice of Montenegrin as the language of delivery amplifies rather than restricts this universality: in a competition increasingly populated by English-language entries, singing in one's native tongue is a declaration of identity — a statement that this song belongs to this people and this place, even as its emotional content aspires to something continent-wide.

Musical Production and the Subotić–Drežnjak Collaboration

The compositional partnership behind "Nova zora" is as noteworthy as the song itself. As detailed in RTCG's feature on the Montesong 2025 composers, Boris Subotić — carrying both composition and lyric credits — collaborated with Marko Drežnjak to develop an arrangement that balances contemporary production values with the cultural authenticity that gives the song its unique character. The integration of warm, traditional Montenegrin sound-textures alongside a sleek modern pop production framework creates a sonic identity that is unmistakably both Balkan and Eurovision-ready.

The production philosophy is elegantly disciplined. Rather than overcrowding the mix with competing sonic elements, the arrangement builds deliberately — intimate and restrained in the verses, before the chorus opens outward into something larger and more communal. Given that Tamara Živković's voice is the song's most powerful asset, this structural decision — trust the singer — is not just sound design, it is sound editorial thinking. "Nova zora" was officially released on 27 November 2025, giving the competition circuit and streaming audiences time to encounter the song before the Vienna stage amplified it to its fullest potential.

Montesong 2025: The National Selection

Montesong is Montenegro's national selection event for the Eurovision Song Contest, organized and broadcast by RTCG. The competition blends a professional jury panel with a public televote, balancing industry expertise against popular reception. The 2025 edition — selecting Montenegro's representative for Eurovision 2026 — was held on 21 December 2025, a date that would prove a turning point not just for Tamara Živković but for Montenegrin Eurovision ambition more broadly.

When Tamara delivered "Nova zora" on the Montesong stage, the reaction was both immediate and decisive. The professional jury placed her first — a clean sweep of the expert vote. The public then added a strong second-place televote result, producing a combined total that demonstrated genuine, cross-constituency appeal. Full official coverage from RTCG's Eurosong hub documented both the evening's detail and its national significance: the victory was unambiguous, and emotionally resonant for a broadcaster invested in making the 2026 campaign a meaningful chapter in Montenegro's Eurovision story.

An entry that wins the jury at the technical level and moves the public at the emotional level simultaneously is an entry with genuine Eurovision DNA. Tamara Živković's Montesong 2025 result confirmed exactly that duality — and made clear why RTCG's confidence in "Nova zora" was well founded.

Technical Analysis: Voice, Staging, and Competitive Potential

Vocal Range and Performance Demands

Tamara Živković's vocal profile is genuinely distinctive. The combination of classical flute training — which develops extraordinary breath management and tonal precision — with years of competitive pop performance creates a singer who commands dynamic range with uncommon control. "Nova zora" is built to exploit this fully. The verses are intimate: soft, almost conversational, requiring the singer to hold a room through restraint rather than volume. The chorus is precisely the opposite: full-voiced, ascending, demanding the kind of sustained projection that only a truly prepared instrument can deliver under live conditions.

The bridge represents the song's most rigorous vocal challenge — the point where breath support, pitch accuracy at full dynamic volume, and emotional authenticity must occur simultaneously. Based on Tamara's national final delivery at Montesong 2025, the evidence is clear: she is not merely capable of navigating these demands. She is built for them.

Eurovision Staging Potential

Visually, "Nova zora" is a song with considerable staging range. The dawn imagery at its thematic core lends itself naturally to an evolving lighting narrative — deep blues and purples giving way to warm pinks and golds, a gradual illumination that mirrors the song's emotional arc from quiet intimacy to full-throated release. A minimal staging concept — Tamara alone at centre stage, surrounded by a carefully choreographed lightscape — would amplify the vulnerability of the verses while allowing the chorus to feel genuinely cinematic.

More elaborate approaches could incorporate a live string ensemble or backing performers who emerge only at the song's emotional peak — the visual equivalent of the very dawn the lyrics describe. Whatever direction the production team ultimately pursues, the guiding principle must remain constant: let the song lead. "Nova zora" is at its most powerful when Živković's voice occupies the centre of attention without competition.

Montenegro competes in Eurovision 2026 Semi-Final 1 in Vienna, where qualifying for the Grand Final will require connecting with both the jury panel and the public televote. Full Semi-Final 1 coverage — including all competing entries and live results — is available at the ESCTrivia Eurovision 2026 Semi-Final 1 event page. It is here that "Nova zora" will face its first European audience test — and the first public answer to whether the continent is ready for a new dawn from Montenegro.