The same format set by Radio Television of Serbia in Beovizija 2008 took place in 2009. The deadline for the submission of songs by artist to the national broadcaster was on January 27, 2009. One of the requirements for entry was that the songs must be performed in Serbian, however, the winning song can be sung in any language at Eurovision. The only main difference to last year's Beovizija was that the winners also received a cash prize. On January 30, 2009, 20 semi-finalists were selected by a group of RTS judges: Jelena Ilić, Ana Milićević and Jelena Vlahović. The final of Beovizija 2009 was held on March 8, 2009 at the Sava Centar in Belgrade. The winner of Beovizija 2009, selected through a 50/50 split of jury and televoting.
Stage
Beovizija is known to have one of the best stage designs in the national selection process for Eurovision. This year the stage will symbolise the technological advances in television in the past 50 years in Serbia. This is why a large number of television and LCD display screens is being used. The stage has settings for all new electronic possibilities. The theme of the two nights is largely based around the music from popular local television shows in the past 50 years. The semi-final was based around popular shows produced since the 1970s to the end of the 1990s while the final will be centred on new popular television shows aired on RTS. The stage design was revealed to the public on February 25, 2009. The stage has also been designed in a way to give a more fulfilling HD experience as it will be the first time Beovizija will be aired in high definition.
In Beovizija the jury has 50% of the vote which is combined with the audience televote. Each person from the three member jury ranks the songs they liked from one to twelve. Once this is done the votes from the jury are added up and a final score card from one to twelve is produced. In the semi-final, the three-member jury was
The semi-final of Beovizija 2009 was held on March 7, 2009 at the Sava Centar in Belgrade starting at 21:00. Twenty songs competed, with the top 10 songs progressing to the final on 8 March. The draw for the running order of the contest was held on February 26, 2009, which was drawn by last year's Beovizija winner and Serbian Eurovision entry for 2008 Jelena Tomašević. The semi-final was broadcast live on RTS1 in Serbia, RTS Sat and in Europe and beyond, RTRS in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on Radio Belgrade. A few hours before the final, RTS published on their website that the televoting results used to determine the qualifiers were taken from only the first five minutes of the ten-minute televoting period. Had the full ten minutes' worth of televotes been used to determine the scores, Ana Nikolić and Ivana Selakov would have qualified for the final in the places of Etar and Sonja Bakić. RTS reinstated both Nikolić and Selakov, raising the total number of finalists from 10 to 12. Nikolić declined to participate, however, so 11 participants competed in the final. The performances highlighted below in orange were announced as finalists during the broadcast of the semi-final. The performances highlighted in red were progressed to the final to correct the error in counting the televotes. In the case of a tie, the performance ranked higher by the jury was given the higher placing.
Final
The following are songs that have qualified to the final night, held on March 8, 2009 in Sava Centar, aired at 21.00CET on RTS1, RTS SAT, RTRS, rts.rs and Radio Belgrade. Blagoslov za kraj won the televote by a landslide, taking in more votes than all ten remaining entries combined. The song received only five points from the jury however, allowing Ciplela, which the jury ranked first, to win. This marked the first time in Beovizija history that the televoters' favourite was not the overall winner.
