Six years, one pandemic, and a career's worth of lived experience separate Poland's first rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest from its second. In 2026, ALICJA — the Ciechanów-born soul singer who watched her inaugural chance at the contest vanish when COVID-19 cancelled the 2020 edition — returns to Poland's national stage and wins again. This time she brings with her a song called "Pray": an English-language R&B anthem about faith, resilience, and the long road toward a dream deferred. Having swept the Finał Polskich Kwalifikacji 2026 with 32.01 per cent of the entire national public vote, she now heads to Vienna for the 70th Eurovision Song Contest carrying both a clear democratic mandate and one of the contest's most compellingly autobiographical back-stories.

The Artist: A Voice Built for This Moment

From Ciechanów to The Voice of Poland

Alicja Maria Szemplińska grew up in Ciechanów, a city in Mazovian Poland, and she was barely seventeen years old when she changed the course of her own life in front of a national television audience. In 2019, she entered Season 10 of The Voice of Poland — the country's most coveted vocal competition — and won it outright, earning a record deal with Universal Music Polska and becoming one of the most talked-about young voices in Polish music. The victory became the launchpad for a recording career that, within five years, would produce a critically appreciated debut album and now a second shot at staging a European anthem on the world's most watched song contest. She performs mononymously as ALICJA, and the all-caps rendition is not a stylistic accident: it is the declaration of an artist who understands that her name, at this stage, carries the weight of a full artistic identity.

What distinguished ALICJA at The Voice of Poland from her very first audition was not merely the technical quality of her instrument — remarkable as that already was for a teenager — but the specificity of her emotional register. As the official EBU profile describes, she is now regarded as one of the most distinctive voices on the Polish music scene, with a sound that blends R&B and soul and captivates through the emotional depth and authenticity of her delivery. There is a quality in her performance that sits between control and surrender: a voice capable of a warmth in the lower range that grounds the listener in an intimate space, and a clear, piercing upper register that lands with real force without tipping into harshness. Polish audiences heard it immediately. What followed was a deliberate, carefully paced career build under Universal Music Polska that prioritised artistic development over the quick commercial play — and whose most important dividends are now being drawn all at once.

Career and Debut Album

Signed to Universal Music Polska, ALICJA moved through a series of singles in the years following her Voice of Poland breakthrough, building a sound anchored in R&B and soul while developing a lyrical sensibility centred on personal authenticity and emotional directness. As the official EBU entry profile confirms, her music blends elements of R&B and soul with an emotional depth that captivates listeners through the authenticity of her delivery — and in her most recent releases she has presented lyrics rooted ever more explicitly in lived personal experience.

In 2024, that ambition crystallised into nie wracam ("I am not coming back"), her debut studio album. Promoted by the singles Spokojnie panowie, the title track nie wracam, Za dużo łez, and W co ty dziś grasz?, the record tells a series of intimate stories that allowed audiences to rediscover ALICJA as a more mature and deeply expressive artist. By the time nie wracam was released, it was already apparent that she was building toward something on a larger scale. In an official TVP interview, ALICJA confirmed that her priorities are "primarily work on the performance, as well as on my second album" — a record being developed in collaboration with a London-based label, the most internationally ambitious chapter of a career arc that has always been pointing outward. The decision to write, record, and compete in English was never an accident: with "Pray", ALICJA signals to a European audience that she has arrived.

Personal Life

Off-stage, ALICJA is in a relationship with Polish rapper Łukasz Hodakowski, known professionally as Hodak. As Plejada reported, Hodak has been a fixture of the Polish rap scene for over a decade, with tracks including "Rubinowe wino", "Omerta", "Oh Wow", and "Oh No!" among his most-recognised work — alongside a new single, "Magnifique", released in early March 2026. The relationship carries a professional dimension as well: Hodak co-wrote several of ALICJA's earlier songs, including "Spójrz", "Napraw mnie", and notably "W co ty dziś grasz?", one of the standout tracks from nie wracam. When Poland's national final result came through, he marked the occasion publicly, posting a joint photograph on Instagram on the morning of 8 March with the caption "Dzień Kobiet, kochani" — International Women's Day, darlings — a gesture that the Polish internet received with considerable warmth.

The Song: The Architecture of Prayer

Credits and Composition

"Pray" was composed by ALICJA alongside co-writers Weronika Gabryelczyk and Sinclair Alan Malcolm. The inclusion of an international co-writer signals a deliberate architecture to the song's construction: ALICJA's voice, instinct, and personal narrative at the centre, with a team assembled to help her build a song that will travel beyond Poland's borders. The choice to perform entirely in English — her first Eurovision entry in any language other than Polish — is the single clearest statement of intent in the whole entry: this artist is addressing a global audience, and she has chosen a song that makes that ambition structural rather than cosmetic.

Meaning and Themes

The thematic architecture of "Pray" is built around a crystalline emotional moment. As the official Eurovision.com entry story explains, the song is "a deeply personal story about an artist's journey, faith in their dreams, and the act of praying for those dreams to come true." More precisely, it captures a very specific psychological territory: the moment when readiness for change finally arrives — the threshold between the life you have been living and the one you are about to step into. Symbolically, "Pray" closes one chapter and opens a new one in ALICJA's life, both emotionally and musically.

That theme carries biographical weight that the average Eurovision listener may not clock immediately, but that Polish audiences understand perfectly. ALICJA had already made it this far once before, in 2020, before a global pandemic dismantled the contest she had prepared for. The act of praying for a dream to come true — of sustaining faith through an extended, involuntary wait — is not, for this artist, a lyrical abstraction. It is a lived experience. As she put it directly in an interview with TVP: "To jest utwór o mojej drodze życiowej, o mojej walce o marzenia" — "It is a song about my life journey, about my fight for dreams." That authenticity is precisely the kind of emotional substrate that travels well when it comes through a screen into somebody's living room at 10 PM on a Tuesday night in May.

Behind the Creation

The finished song conceals the effort that went into it. In the same TVP interview, ALICJA revealed that the creative process involved approximately twenty recording sessions before the song reached its final form: "Była długa droga z tym utworem, bo tak naprawdę miałyśmy chyba ze dwadzieścia sesji nagraniowych, żeby go stworzyć" — "It was a long road with this song; we had about twenty recording sessions to create it." The composition began life as a classic solo number, but the creative team gradually opened its character outward, ultimately fusing soul, gospel, R&B, and hip-hop into a single coherent arc — a stylistic breadth that reflects both ALICJA's musical range and the intentional ambition of a song designed to register across multiple listening traditions simultaneously.

The Road to Vienna: A Landslide and a Long Wait Rewarded

Finał Polskich Kwalifikacji 2026

Poland's path to Vienna 2026 ran once again through Finał Polskich Kwalifikacji — the national selection format that has become one of the more distinctive on the Eurovision calendar, not least for its structural decision to separate the live performance evening from the result announcement. Eight artists performed at the Finał on Saturday, 7 March 2026, in a broadcast hosted by Artur Orzech and starting at 17:35 on TVP. Voting was determined entirely by the Polish public — 100% televoting, no jury — and the result was sealed overnight. The winner was not announced at the end of the live show: audiences had to tune in the following morning to Pytanie na Śniadanie on TVP 2 to learn which artist would represent Poland in Austria.

ALICJA revealed to Plejada that she had actually been informed of the outcome the night before it was made public. When the result was shared with the rest of Poland on 8 March — International Women's Day — the margin made headlines in its own right. As TVP confirmed in the official announcement, "Pray" polled a decisive 32.01 per cent of all public votes cast — a landslide in a field of eight songs, decided by the Polish people alone, with no broadcaster or jury filtering the outcome. Speaking after the result was revealed, ALICJA offered a reaction as generous as it was direct: "Jestem przeszczęśliwa i zaszczycona. Wdzięczna, pełna motywacji do działania" — "I am overjoyed and honoured. Grateful, full of motivation to act."

Historical Context

The result completes a loop that had been open for six years. In an interview with TVP, ALICJA reflected on the weight of the moment: "To, że mam szansę, żeby po tylu latach zawalczyć o Eurowizję ponownie, to jest (…) wielki moment" — "That I have the chance, after so many years, to fight for Eurovision again — this is a great moment." The backstory behind that statement is specific: when ALICJA first won a Polish pre-selection — with her song "Empires" via a special Eurovision edition of Szansa na sukces in 2020 — the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled in its entirety due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She did not get to perform. The years that followed became the foundation on which nie wracam was built and "Pray" was written. The continuity of format gives the story its larger frame: Finał Polskich Kwalifikacji also delivered Justyna Steczkowska to the 2025 selection, where her electrifying performance of GAJA took Poland to the Grand Final in Basel and a 14th-place finish after years of difficult semi-final runs. That result established a new baseline expectation for what a Finał Polskich Kwalifikacji winner can achieve on the international stage. ALICJA now inherits that expectation — and the added weight of a personal narrative that gives her entry a gravity few of her competitors can match. She will perform in the First Semi-Final on 12 May 2026, in the second half — one of the more strategically favoured positions in the draw.

Technical Analysis: Voice, Vision, and Competitive Potential

Vocal Profile

ALICJA's voice is, by any objective measure, one of the more complete instruments in the 2026 Eurovision field. The mezzo-soprano timbre suits the emotional register of "Pray" with precision: the lower passages carry warmth without muddiness, grounding the listener in an intimate space before the song's larger moments demand full projection. In her upper register, she produces a tone that is clear and intensely emotive rather than merely loud — the distinction that separates a technically trained singer from one who simply has natural ability, and that becomes definitively audible in an arena. The R&B and soul vocabulary she has developed across nearly a decade of recording gives her access to dynamic contrast and phrasing flexibility that most pop constructions do not require and therefore do not cultivate. At Eurovision, where a live performance must communicate through layers of broadcast compression to an audience scattered across thirty-odd countries, that kind of nuance is not a luxury: it is a competitive advantage.

Staging Potential

The thematic content of "Pray" is rich with staging possibilities. A song about faith, waiting, transformation, and the threshold moment of change has a directional arc built into its emotional logic: it begins in intimacy and builds toward release. That structure is highly adaptable — it can be rendered as stark minimalism (a single performer in a pool of light, the voice doing all the structural work) or as a fully orchestrated visual crescendo that mirrors the song's musical build architecturally. TVP has shown, through the high-impact staging it constructed for Justyna Steczkowska's GAJA in Basel, that it understands how to build Eurovision visuals that use production design to amplify rather than overwhelm an artist. ALICJA's aesthetic identity — grounded in emotional authenticity rather than theatrical excess — suggests a stage concept that trusts the voice to carry the fundamental weight, while lighting, choreography, and set architecture expand the song's themes of transformation and release into the Wiener Stadthalle's enormous physical space. The prayer motif is visually evocative and directionally flexible; in skilled production hands, it is one of the more potent raw materials available to any act in the 2026 semi-final lineup.

Competitive Outlook

The English language, the international co-writing team, the second-half draw in Semi-Final 1, and the ready-made narrative of an artist who waited six years for this moment: "Pray" arrives at Vienna 2026 with every structural element of a song built to travel well beyond its home market. R&B and soul entries at Eurovision require a performer of genuine calibre to avoid sounding generic against the backdrop of a contest that has historically favoured more theatrical or pop-oriented sounds — and ALICJA brings that calibre unambiguously. The question for the stage design team is how to give the emotional content of "Pray" a visual dimension that matches its vocal ambition. A public that gave her 32.01 per cent of an entire national vote in a field of eight has already answered the question of whether the song resonates. In the First Semi-Final on 12 May, the task for Poland is to translate that domestic conviction into the kind of cross-continental moment that defines what the 70th Eurovision Song Contest will be remembered for. For an artist who has already shown she can capture her country's imagination once under pressure — and who has spent six years turning loss into a body of work worth hearing — the conditions have rarely been more aligned.