National Selections

Each competitor must be selected in a national selection of the student’s country of study. The country can have one or multiple pre-selections but the number of selected students to compete cannot exceed the allocated amount of each country.

National organizers

The local organizers for the national selections are as follow:

  • Sweden: Swedish National Ballet School
  • Norway: Norwegian National Ballet School
  • Finland: Finnish National Ballet School
  • Denmark: Den Danske Balletpris
  • Iceland: National Ballet School of Iceland
  • Estonia: Tallin Ballet School
  • Latvia: Latvia National Ballet School
  • Lithuania: National MK Curlionis School of Arts

Each organizer can arrange the national selection as it suits their country. It can be an audition with solos or a selection from a ballet class. Jury members of the semi- and grand finale cannot be involved in any of the National Selections.

The organizer has to submit the selected students with a registration form, provided by the PDN coordination team, before the last day of application stated by the PDN. The organizer can on top of submitting the number of competitors given their country also submit the same amount of reserves. The reserves have to be ranked in which order they would be relevant to replace a competitor. A reserve can replacing a selected competitor in case of injure or other absent up to 2 weeks before the day of the semifinal, after this deadline no competitors can be added to the semifinal.

The organizer will invite other pre-professional ballet schools in their country to be able to participate in the national selection. The organizer will ask the other schools to give feedback of the national process.

If the national selections were made by an audition with variations the selected candidates can choose another variation to compete with in the semifinal.

Amount of selected to semifinal

The maximum number of competitors in the semifinal will be 46. The amount is divided between the participating countries as below:

  • Estonian: 2
  • Latvia: 2
  • Lithuania: 2
  • Denmark: 6
  • Iceland: 6
  • Finland: 8 
  • Norway: 12
  • Sweden: 12 

Additional semifinalists

If a country chooses not to fill its quota, the PDN production team has the right to invite additional competitors from other participating countries to fill the maximum number of competitors.

Additional invitations will be given out to the countries one by one in the order for the list above. The additional competitors have to have been submitted as a competitor or reserve before the deadline set in the invitation.