As a member of the "Big Five", France automatically qualified to compete in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest.
[1] France first won the contest in 1958 with "Dors, mon amour" performed by André Claveau.
France has also finished second four times, with Paule Desjardins in 1957, Catherine Ferry in 1976, Joëlle Ursull in 1990 and Amina in 1991, who lost out to Sweden's Carola in a tie-break.
Results in the final were determined by the combination of public televoting (50%) and a ten-member international jury panel (50%).
[7] The four entries that qualified from the preceding two semi-finals competed and "Mercy" performed by Madame Monsieur was selected as the winner.
[16] Alma, who represented France in the 2017 Contest, replaced Amir in the Francophone jury panel who provided feedback to the competing artists.
[8] Madame Monsieur made appearances across Europe to specifically promote "Mercy" as the French Eurovision entry.
For the Amsterdam event, 2018 United Kingdom representative SuRie performed the English version of the song alongside Jean-Karl Lucas as Satt was unable to travel due to illness.
[21][22][23][24][25] The Eurovision Song Contest 2018 took place at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal and consisted of two semi-finals on 8 and 10 May and the final on 12 May 2018.
[26] According to Eurovision rules, all nations with the exceptions of the host country and the "Big Five" (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) were required to qualify from one of two semi-finals in order to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progressed to the final.
[27] During the second press conference that took place on 6 May, Madame Monsieur took part in a draw to determine in which half of the final the French entry would be performed.
On the final part of the song, the duo performed their signature hand motion with the entire audience in the arena joining in.
Offstage backing vocal support was provided by Allyson Ezell and Destination Eurovision semifinalist Noée.