Festival Song Competition Culminates with Live Show on July 26

The top 10 finalists in the 2025 Jamaica Festival Song Competition will vie for the coveted title during the final results show on Saturday, July 26, at Emancipation Park in Kingston, beginning 8:30 p.m., where more than $3 million in cash and prizes will be awarded to the winner.

The competition, organised by the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport through the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC), attracted more than 160 song entries this year.

The 10 finalists are Askia Livingstone – “Nation Vow”; Romane Ingram – “Deh Pon Mi Mind”; Oliver Ashley – “Jamaica You Have It All”; Jonah Jack – “Vision Jamaica”; Abigail Dunstan – ‘Sweet Ja”; Raldene Dyer – “Jam Dung”; Julene Clarke – “A Jam Dung Dis”; Bredda C & Jegz – “Come Mek Wi Rally”; Christopher Laing –“Jamaica is Big Big Everywhere”; and Randeen Thomas – “Naah Leave”.

Festival Song Committee Chairman, Orville Hill, told JIS News that all entries submitted for this year’s competition were preliminarily screened by a panel of judges over a two-day period.

“Having closed the entries, all the songs that were entered went through a listening session [where] we arranged for a panel of judges who are well known in the industry to come together and they listened to each song. From that listening session, they identified the songs that they considered potential finalists and after doing that, we came up with about 30 songs that came out of the listing called semifinalists,” he explained.

Those 30 entrants competed in the semi-finals in May at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre in St Andrew from which the 10 finalists were selected by a panel of judges.

“The $3,000,000 prize is [divided among the] three critical components of putting the song together, which are the producer, the writer and the performer. So it’s intended to be $1,000,000 each… because it takes quite a bit of creativity to come up with your writing, the producer to put it in its correct sound and, of course, the performer who will bring their personal style in terms of delivery,” Mr. Hill informed.

He added that the final promises to be exceptional, with each of the finalists bringing something unique to the stage.

“We have a good combination of persons who are young and innovative as well as persons who have been in the industry for some time, and they have different genres of music that will come forward. So I think persons can expect to get good variety, great entertainment and, ultimately, I think we will find a song that Jamaica can rally around as we get into our Independence celebrations. I invite all of Jamaica to come and be entertained,” Mr. Hill said.

The show is free to the public and will also be broadcast live on Television Jamaica (TVJ) as well as the social media pages of the JCDC.